A study of Australians’ internet searches has revealed our secret desperate attempts to pronounce some surprisingly common words – and even names.

The study of 2025 Google search data by website Unscramblerer.com found that we’re quietly searching for the right way to say many food terms and some names of Irish, Arabic or African origin.

Irish names take out four of the top 10 spots with Niamh (pronounced NEEV) taking No.1 with more than 97,000 searches. It was followed by Aoife (ee-fuh, 90,000), Saoirse (SER-sha, 79,500 searches) and Caoimhe (KEE-vuh, 78,100 searches).

Food is also a popular pronunciation puzzle with “croissant” (kwah-son, 79,200 searches) in fifth spot, followed soon after by “acai” (assa-ee, 78,000) at No.7, “charcuterie” (shar-koo-tuh-ree, 76,800 searches), the tongue-twister that is “Worcestershire sauce” (wuss-tuh-shu sauce, 74,400 searches), “paella” (pie-ELL-uh, 72,000 searches) and even “spaghetti” (spug-get-ee, 69,600 searches).

Other searches to rack up big numbers were for “dachshund” (daks-und, 80,400 searches) at third, as well as “schedule” (shed-yool, 66,000 searches) and even the South Australian capital, Adelaide (AD-uh-layd, 22,600 searches).

The data even uncovered the most confusing words in each state. Queenslanders were broken by “Worcestershire sauce”, while Victorians struggled most with “croissant”. In NSW it was Niamh, Canberrans were beaten by the caramelised milk that is “dulce de leche” and Western Australians were stumped by “acai”.

Tasmanians and South Australians kept it close to home with searches for Launceston topping the Tasmanian list and Adelaide proving trickiest in SA.

In the Northern Territory, “cacao” took No.1 spot.

Unscramblerer said its experts analysed search data from Google Trends from January 1 until November 14 to find the most mispronounced words. They then used AI marketing platform Ahrefs to find the number of searches.

“Our research about the most searched-for mispronunciations gives an interesting insight into Australia’s culture,” an Unscramblerer spokesperson said on Tuesday.

“Exposure to new words through media, music, pop culture and social platforms drives curiosity. People often look up pronunciations if there is a gap between how a word or name is spelled and how it sounds.”

The spokesperson said English was particularly tricky for some people with common words – such as “colonel” and “Wednesday” – defying phonetic expectations.

“English spelling only matches pronunciation about 75 per cent of the time [according University of Oxford research],” they said.

Additionally, a Cambridge University linguistics survey found that more than 60 per cent of English speakers admit to regularly mispronouncing at least one common word.

“Correct pronunciation is closely tied to perceived intelligence and competence,” the spokesperson said.

“The desire for correct pronunciation is a mix of avoiding social embarrassment and simple curiosity. No wonder people are searching for how to pronounce words.”