How We Handle Dual-Pronunciation Letters in Baby Name Search

When building BabyNamePick , we discovered that some letters create interesting UX challenges. The letter C is the best example — it has two completely different sounds. The Problem C names like Callum and Celeste start with the same letter but sound nothing alike. Parents searching for a "K-sounding" name don't want to wade through "S-sounding" results, and vice versa. Our Approach We added phonetic metadata to our name database: // Each name includes its phonetic start { name : " Callum " , phoneticStart : " hard-c " , // K sound origin : " scottish " } { name : " Celeste " , phoneticStart : " soft-c " , // S sound origin : " latin " } This lets us offer a toggle on the C names page — browse all C names, or filter by sound. The Linguistic Rule The pattern is actually predictable: Before A, O, U and consonants → hard C (K sound): Callum, Corbin, Clara Before E, I, Y → soft C (S sound): Celeste, Cillian, Cyrus We use this rule as a fallback when phonetic data isn't manually tagged: fun