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About this tool
Turn your name into a shareable pronunciation card with syllable breaks, a plain-English respelling, stress marking and NATO letter spelling.
The Name Pronunciation Guide Builder turns a name into a shareable card containing four things: the syllable breaks, a plain-English respelling with the stressed syllable in capitals, the letter-by-letter spelling in the ICAO/NATO alphabet, and a list of the spelling patterns readers usually get wrong. The respelling uses open and closed syllable rules — Priya becomes PREE-yuh, Aarav becomes AH-ruhv — and you can override it with your own version at any point. Paste the finished card into an email signature, a LinkedIn bio or a first-day introduction.
Open Name Pronunciation Guide Builder on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Type your name into Your name, and optionally add Your own respelling such as PREE-yuh plus a Rhymes with line.
Under 'Which syllable is stressed?' click the syllable you emphasise so the card capitalises it.
The Say it card shows the respelling, Syllable breaks and Initials, with the ICAO/NATO letters under 'Spelling it out on a call'; Copy card copies the whole card.
Plain-English syllables anyone can read, rather than IPA characters most people cannot.
The stressed syllable is capitalised, which is the single detail most guides leave out.
Alfa, Bravo, Charlie — the ICAO alphabet, unchanged since 1956 and understood worldwide.
Break it into syllables, respell each syllable the way an English reader would sound it out, and capitalise the stressed one — PREE-yuh, AH-ruhv, ROH-huhn. Hyphens between syllables and capitals for stress carry more information to a general reader than IPA symbols do.
It is the ICAO spelling alphabet: Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliett, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu. It has been the international standard since 1956 and is used by aviation, shipping and emergency services.
Mostly four patterns: the h in kh, gh, bh, dh and th marks a puff of air rather than a separate sound; a final a is a short uh that English speakers tend to drop; ph is an aspirated p in many names, not an f; and doubled vowels such as aa and ee are one long sound, not two syllables.
It is increasingly common and costs one line — for example "Priya (PREE-yuh)". It saves colleagues the awkwardness of guessing, and it is far more effective than correcting people one at a time after the fact.