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Anand is of Sanskrit origin and means happiness, and used in the oldest texts. The word, from the prefix A + the root nand + suffix a was Ananda (long open A, dental voiced nasal n, dental voiced d, short closed schwa a) with the tonal stress on the last syllable. (The dental d is similar to the th- in the.) Stress in the vedic language was, however, often contextual, and disappeared early in the development of Sanskrit.

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In many modern Indian languages of Sanskrit origin, words are usually unstressed. There is a length difference: the A is long and the a is a short schwa. A final -a is often dropped in Hindi (though written in the script): this gives you the pronounciation of Anand. The total length of the vowel A and that of the entire syllable nand is counted equal in prosody: both are longer than the length of a simple syllable like na.

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In other Indian languages, the details will be different. For example, in Bengali, the same word will be Anondo, where the middle -o- could have a slightly differnt quality (short version of the sound in awe), especially when used as a word meaning happiness instead of the name. Again, no syllable is stressed, and, in Bengali, the length differences in syllables are almost imperceptible, so A-, -non-, and -do are almost equal in length.