Finally Siri says my name correctly

iPutz

iPutz

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I don't know if this has been covered elsewhere in this forum but I'll put it here anyway. Last September or October I called AppleCare+ for help in getting Siri to correctly pronounce my last name. I couldn't call anyone in my family using Siri because she could not recognize the name even when I purposely mispronounced it similar to the way she did. My last name is only 4 letters long and Siri just couldn't get it right or even come close. After an hour of trying different solutions, the AppleCare specialist could not solve this problem.

Today I noticed a new data field called "Phonetic Last Name" while I was entering the information for a new contact on my iPhone. I tried entering my last name's phonetic spelling in this field and Siri finally says my last name correctly.

You can edit any contact that Siri mispronounces by going to that contact's page and in the upper right hand corner press "Edit". Scroll all the way to the bottom where you will find "Add Field", pressing that will bring up a list of the fields you can add to that contact's information. Among the possibilities is "Phonetic First Name' and "Phonetic Last Name". Tapping on one of those fields and entering the correct phonetic spelling of the name and pressing on "Done" results in Siri finally pronouncing the name correctly after the phone is restarted. You may need several tries to get the correct spelling. The phonetic pronunciation is placed on the contact's page below the name. I not sure why the restart is needed but that's what it took for Siri to use the new pronunciation.

I am not sure when this feature was added but it is a welcome one.
 
iPutz

iPutz

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I used a common English word that is spelled totally different than my name's spelling and it worked. When I was working with Apple's tech support the gentleman had me substitute that same spelling as my last name in the contact info page and for some reason it did not work. There was no mention of the phonetic spelling entry that I finally found and used. Did the restarting of the phone have something to do with it? I Don't know. At least this time around my name stays correctly spelled on the contact information displayed but Siri finally says my name correctly.

I know how you feel about spending a lot of time digging into iOS, I'm retired and most days in the warm months my wife and I are out on my Harley riding or traveling but in my spare time or in the winter I'm usually in my computer room playing with the iPhone or iPad trying to get it to do what I want and doing the research to accomplish that. My Wife jokingly calls them my mistresses because I spend so much time with them.
 
iPutz

iPutz

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On a final note I have noticed that even though the phonetic spelling does not show up in Microsoft Outlook's contact information following a synchronization with my PC, the names are passed along when subsequently synching other iDevices to the PC. After completing all the changes in my iPhone I synched it with my PC and checked the Outlook information and found no reference to the phonetic field or spellings at all. However, when I then synched my iPad with the PC, that phonetic spelling information followed to the iPad. I'm not sure of the mechanism that allows this and am surprised to see it but it definitely makes life easier for those of us with multiple iDevices.
 
Rafagon

Rafagon

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iPutz said:
On a final note I have noticed that even though the phonetic spelling does not show up in Microsoft Outlook's contact information following a synchronization with my PC, the names are passed along when subsequently synching other iDevices to the PC. After completing all the changes in my iPhone I synched it with my PC and checked the Outlook information and found no reference to the phonetic field or spellings at all. However, when I then synched my iPad with the PC, that phonetic spelling information followed to the iPad. I'm not sure of the mechanism that allows this and am surprised to see it but it definitely makes life easier for those of us with multiple iDevices.
Click to expand...
It's Microsoft, so shortcomings are to be expected.

If their software managed to keep the field and its data and subsequently pass it on to an iOS device during sync, would it have killed them to display it?
 
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