The inspiration for creating this website came at a hockey rink in 2006.
I was doing color commentary for my local college hockey team's radio broadcast, and our play-by-play announcer was scrambling just before the start of the game to obtain the opposing team's pronunciations. It occurred to me that scores of other broadcasters likely faced the same challenge.
A little research confirmed that a huge opportunity did in fact exist to serve this need. I discovered that while many teams do provide written pronunciation guides, they are sometimes hard to find and often difficult to decipher. And chasing down the visiting team's play-by-play announcer for help has its own challenges, as my broadcast partner experienced.
I wanted to create a resource that offered greater convenience and more accuracy in confirming correct name pronunciations. And I quickly realized that the interest in knowing name pronunciations stretches beyond the sports world to entertainers, places, brands, and more. Thus, The Name Engine® was born.
In 2012, The Name Engine introduced the Ear It application, which enables organizations to feature audio name pronunciations directly from the pages of their own websites. This service is currently featured on 100+ college athletics websites, and we have recently begun to offer it to the healthcare industry as well.
We hope you find The Name Engine both informative and entertaining. Please let us know if there is anything we can do to improve the site and make it serve you even better.
Curt Bussen
Founder
The Name Engine, LLC