Hebrew names lost in translation: Mangina, Dudu

I recently stumbled upon a funny post about Hebrew names at the blog Zabaj. Here’s a snippet:

So my family and I love to play this game – try and come up with as many names we can think of that sound great in Hebrew but hilarious in English. Some of them just look funny as they’re written and mispronounced, others are funny simply because of how they sound.

Some of the names mentioned in the post were:

  • Osnot (pronounced oh snot)
  • Oded (pronounced oh dead)
  • Amit (pronounced ah meat)
  • Ramit (pronounced raw meat)
  • Mangina (pronounced mahn gee nah)
  • Dudu (pronounced doo doo)

Imagine living in small-town USA with the name Mangina…

4 thoughts on “Hebrew names lost in translation: Mangina, Dudu

  1. Yes, this is a perfect example of what not to do. Parents must be cognizant not only of how the name sounds in various languages, but what it means as well. What may seem cute in English may be offensive or slang in another language.

  2. Magina, where did you get the information about the hebrew name ‘Dudu’? Please provide me with some more information of this name in hebrew. Thanks ;)

  3. “Dudu” is a very, very common nickname for “Daveed” or “Dovid” which is “David” in English.

  4. My great uncles name was hyman. I used to love saying it when I was younger but never understood why it made everyone laugh so hard!! So glad my mom chose something not so graphic.

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