---
title: How should I properly pronounce your name?
#feed_description: 
author: Issa Rice
creation_date: 2015-05-23
last_major_revision_date: 2015-05-23
language: English
# accepts "notes", "draft", "in progress", or "mostly finished"
status: mostly finished
# accepts "certain", "highly likely", "likely", "possible", "unlikely",
# "highly unlikely", "remote", "impossible", "log", "emotional", or
# "fiction"
belief: highly likely
# accepts "CC0", "CC-BY", or "CC-BY-SA"
license: CC-BY
tags: self
#aliases: 
---

[Mirror on Quora](https://www.quora.com/How-should-I-properly-pronounce-your-name/answer/Issa-Rice)


In English: /ˈiːsə/ (EE-suh); at least, this is how everyone pronounces
my name now in the US, so I've gotten used to it. However, I should note
that [Robert
Hass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hass) seems to
pronounce it quite differently on here:

[Poetry Everywhere: Robert Hass Translation of Selected Haiku by Kobayashi Issa](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rl8pRjLSFto)

In Japanese: /isːa/ (いっさ); one can also hear it here (about three to
four seconds in, although he says it about four times throughout the
video):

[小林一茶ここにあり！?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsRGVDjwgR0)

The name is taken from [Kobayashi
Issa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobayashi_Issa) (and,
incidentally, has just about nothing to do with the Arabic name for
[Jesus in
Islam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_in_Islam)). For those
interested in pronouncing it the Japanese way,
[Gemination:Japanese](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geminate_consonant#Japanese)
and [Sokuon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokuon)
may also be useful.