You’ve probably been asked this question, and have it butchered anyways. It would be helpful to have a recording you can send to conference moderators, interviewers etc.

There are services on the web that try to cover this space but your name is probably missing or wrong.

There’s a way to contribute a recording of your name while also helping grow the digital commons. Wikidata and LinguaLibre lets you do this.

Your given and family names should be listed on Wikidata, the free and open knowledge base and a sister project to Wikipedia. Make sure you don’t recreate existing items and that the items are indeed of the type (instances of) given name and family name by searching them on Wikidata first.

If your names aren’t listed, create a wiki account (if you don’t already have one) and create new items. Describe them appropriately as instances of given and family name respectively. For simple examples, see the items for Arianit and Dobroshi, my first and last names. Some names are cross-cultural and more extensively described, like John, but for our purpose simple describing is sufficient.

Arianit on Wikidata. Hold on pronouncation audio for now Arianit on Wikidata. Hold on pronouncation audio for now.

Record the Q numbers of both, for Arianit it’s Q20000836.

Time to enter the recording studio, browse to LinguaLibre.

  • Click Record.
  • Login with your wiki account and allow access to it.
  • Go through the setup, describing your speaker profile.
  • Enter your names as two or more words.
  • Record their pronounciation and submit.

Recording screen for Arianit Recording screen for Arianit

Now go back to the Wikidata items you created.

  • Click Add statement at the bottom.
  • Write down pronounciation audio on the left and type the name of the audio file you just created which should be in the form: Username-Name_recorded. Mine would be something like Arianit-Arianit, ie Arianit recording of Arianit.

Now the recordings of your names will be listed on the Wikdata items, links of which you can provide to contacts.

And if you’d like to do something more, you can record whole lists (personal names, place names etc.) of Wikidata items.