Expert: Gary Goldberg - 9/26/2009

Question
Hello, I would like to know how to spell the name Tracey Spears in Russian and how to pronounce it.
Many thanks.

Answer
I presume you'll want it in Cyrillic.

Phonetically, it'd be Трейси Спирз.

Strictly speaking, to be accurate you pronounce a foreign name in Russian
the same way as in the original language, especially if you're
a native speaker of the same language and it's not a foreign name
well-known to Russians (for example, "Washington" would be an
exception because Russsian doesn't have a "w" and the word
is always pronounced "Vashington" by Russians who don't know English).

In this case, all the sounds of the name have more or less
equivlents in Russian, with the possible exception of the
vowel in the surname. Russian doesn't have the short
"i" sound (as in "hit") that is in the surname, but the
Russian "i"  (pronounced like the "i" in "machine") is
usually substituted.

Hope that helps,
Gary