Iesha

Obviously, the most correct way to spell Aisha is the Arabic. However, that's not a spelling that I would recommend for a country that uses the Latin alphabet. This site lists Aisha, 'Aisha, Ayesha and Ayishah as legitimate transcripts. I've also seen Aiesha, A'ishah, A'isha and Aiasha. (Why do we get so many spellings? Because there is no standardised way to transcribe Arabic into the Latin alphabet. That’s why we see so many different spellings of Colonel Gaddafi’s name and the word “mujahideen” in the West. Aisha is only ever spelt one way in Arabic, but there are so many different spellings in English.) And, there’s also the French transliteration Aïcha, the Turkish form Ayþe, the Swahili forms Asha and Esha, and the Croatian (?) forms Aiša and Ajša. Oh, and I almost forgot the Turkish name Ayþegül, which is a combination of Ayþe (Aisha) and gül (Turkish for “rose“). With so many beautiful legitimate spellings and forms of this name, you’d think they’d be at least one that would that would make this name easy to pronounce for Anglophones.

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Personally, I don’t see why so many people are so dead set against this name just because of the spelling. I don’t dislike Iesha “because it looks ugly”, or anything like that. I dislike it since it doesn’t reflect the (beautiful) Arabic pronunciation of Aisha. Instead, it’s based on a (rather ugly) English mispronunciation of it. All the transcripts I listed above are correct because they show the Arabic pronunciation. Iesha doesn’t. Please, if you want to give your daughter a beautiful Arabic name (like Aisha), find out how it’s said beforehand. The Arabic pronunciation is far more beautiful than any English one.