How to Pronounce my Name
Gaurav isn’t the name I was born with. I began to dislike my original name, so I decided to adopt my father’s first name. But that doesn’t make me Gaurav Yadav Jr.; it just means both my dad and I are Gaurav Yadav. What a treat!
The pronunciation is “G aww ruv,” but that’s not always what I hear. The spelling can be misleading. The “au” should sound like the soft ‘aw’ in “aww, that’s sweet,” but it often gets pronounced like the sharper ‘aw’ in “ouch, that hurt.” Then there’s the “RAV” part, which often trips people up because it doesn’t naturally read as “ruv.”
The name comes from India, where it’s written as गौरव in Hindi. Here’s how it breaks down in the Devanagari script:
गौ: This is actually two parts combined. ग (ga) is the consonant, and ौ (au) is a vowel mark attached to it, creating the "gau" sound.
र: This is just "r."
व: And this is "v."
Put it all together, and you get “Gaurav.” But the way it’s spelled in English doesn’t always capture these nuances, leading to mispronunciations.
What really puzzles me, though, is when people spell my name as “Guarav.” It’s particularly confusing because I’m clearly not pronouncing the “u” before the “a.” I think this happens because people are more familiar with words where “ua” follows a “g,” like in “guard” or “guarantee.” These patterns are common in English, so when they hear “Gaurav,” their minds might automatically default to the more familiar spelling.
How to get people to say my name correctly:
Refer them to this webpage.
Say my name really slowly. Stress the ‘Aww’ and ‘Ruv’ sounds—people always need a double take with my name anyway, so I kind of do this naturally.
When people say my name back to me, be sure to correct them instead of just accepting whatever pronunciation they come up with.
“My name is Gaurav. It is pronounced with an ‘Aww’ sound and a ‘Ruv’ sound, so it sounds like Gawwruv.” This might feel somewhat patronising, but I suspect many people will actually find it helpful—for both pronouncing my name and remembering it too.
FAQ
Q. Do I get offended if you mispronounce my name?
No. My life is too short for me to be offended by this. It is just nice when people pronounce it correctly.
Q. Do you like being called ‘G’?
In my second year of university I started adopting the nickname, ‘G’ - as a way to make it easy for people to refer to me. Maybe I was also motivated by being cool or something. I don’t really care for ‘G’ anymore. I don’t tell people, ‘my name is Gaurav’ but you can call me ‘G’. You may use it if you want, I have no sense of like or dislike around it. I think it is somewhat a good mark of how deep some friendships are, the more you know me, the less you notice such people using G.
Sometimes I feel like I cater to much to people when I was doing this there are not that many syllables in Gaurav and I think you can make an earnest attempt to pronounce it.
Q. Did you have another other contenders for names you wanted before Gaurav?
Yes! Noah - though I didn’t go for it in the end, it is a name I like it quite a bit! Maybe in some other world I am called Noah Yadav.
