Forvo

name pronunciation

The tool every interviewer should bookmark — paste in a guest's name, hear native speakers pronounce it, move on. The interface looks like it hasn't been updated since 2015 and audio quality varies wildly because submissions are user-generated, but for the specific job of getting names right it has no real competition. 7 million pronunciations across 400+ languages.

Forvo is not a coaching app and doesn't pretend to be one — it's a massive crowdsourced pronunciation dictionary, and for podcasters who interview guests with non-English names it's the single most useful free tool on the internet. Type the name, hit play, and a native speaker pronounces it. Multiple submissions from different countries and accents are common, so you can pick the version that matches where the guest is actually from. Over 7 million pronunciations across more than 400 languages. The same flow works for technical terms, place names, and any word your TTS engine would butcher. The product is deeply unfashionable — the UI is plain, there are ads on the free tier, and there's no real practice mode — but that's also the point. The Premium tier is really a donation rather than a feature unlock. Pair it with ELSA or BoldVoice for actual accent work; use Forvo five times a week for the small thing it does perfectly. No serious interview host should be guessing at guest names when this exists. The site has been around since the mid-2000s and the database keeps growing as users submit recordings — over 7 million pronunciations and counting. Native speakers contribute by recording words and phrases in their mother tongue, and there's a request feature for words that aren't yet covered. For technical terms, foreign place names, and academic vocabulary that AI text-to-speech still mangles, having a human reference takes about 10 seconds and saves you from embarrassment on the recording.