iPhone dictation consistently misspells common name 'Jen' as 'Jenn' or 'Zhen'

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iPhone dictation consistently misspells common name 'Jen' as 'Jenn' or 'Zhen'

My iPhone dictation tool constantly misspells my wife's name. Her name is Jen. It almost always writes "Jenn" though it sometimes writes "Zhen."

I have created an autocorrect to turn Jenn and Zhen into Jen. But it doesn't work.

I have no idea why it uses these obscure, non-standard spellings instead of the extremely common spelling of what must be the most common woman's name in the English language.

Is there anything I can do to stop this? It's super annoying since I do say my wife's name a lot.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: iphone dictation error

iPhone 16 Pro Max, iOS 18

Posted on Jun 28, 2025 8:47 AM

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Answer 1

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adam114 Author

Level 1

13 points

Jul 3, 2025 5:16 AM in response to adam114

I solved my own problem.

The issue seems to be that I had one person in my contacts named "Jenn" and the voice dictation grabbed that spelling every time.

This is maddening in a different way. I have MANY people in my contacts named "Jen," including my wife who is the person I speak to and about most of the time. "Jenn" was a former business colleague I haven't communicated with in years. I also have many other Jens in my contacts.

So, it's really weird and frustrating that the dictation selects one obscure spelling of a common name from Contacts.

In this case, I deleted "Jenn" and the problem disappeared.

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