Why I changed the way I spell my name

I get asked this a lot. In fact, almost every Israeli who knows me well enough to feel comfortable asking this, did. If you know many Israelis, you'd realise that this means anyone who knows me at all (and some who don't really know me).
So if you also asked me the same question, and instead of taking the time to explain myself again I just referred you here, please understand. I am really tired of answering this question again and again. So tired, I took the time to set up this FAQ.

So the reason I don't use 'Nir' anymore, although it's the standard way to write my Israeli name in English, is that it causes people to pronounce it wrong. It's a bit hard to explain in writing, so feel free to skip the next paragraph and go straight to the links.

The problem is that that letter 'i' rarely makes the sound we were taught it makes when we learnt the ABC in the fourth grade - the 'ea' or 'ee' or 'ie' sound (note to native English speakers: not everyone can tell the difference between the three). I'm not entirely sure about the rules here, but it's got to do with the rest of the letters in the word, and specifically in the case of 'Nir' the 'r' following the 'i' comes into play. Consider the way the 'i' sounds in 'first', 'birth' 'shirt'. This is the vowel most English speakers use when they try to pronounce 'Nir'.

And now for the fun part: have a listen to how Mirriam-Webster pronounces the following words. It should make my point very clear.
Birr
Fir
Sir
First
Dirt
Stir

If you want some more examples, you can try playing around with AT&T's Text-to-Speech demo.


So I decided to find a spelling that would cause English speakers to properly pronounce my name, or at least come close.
I've considered Near, Neer, Nier, Nere, Nyr and probably others. Near was the only one that I thought both English speakers and non English speakers would pronounce correctly, and didn't have undesired connotations (like Neer, which is too much like Leer for my liking).

If this explanation does not convince you, and you still think I'm making a mistake, please keep it to yourself. I am miles beyond being interested.
Thank you.

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