IELTS Spelling · Personal names
Personal names in IELTS Listening
Part 1 of the Listening test is often a form being filled in, and the first thing on a form is a name. It is the first question, it is worth the same as every other, and it is lost more often than it should be.
The short answer
A surname that matters will be spelled out loud. Your job is pure transcription: catch the letters, keep the hyphen or apostrophe if there is one, and start with a capital. Nothing about it is a test of your English.
What the recording actually does
The pattern is nearly always the same. Somebody gives the name, the other speaker asks how it is spelt, and the letters follow at conversational speed, sometimes with a correction halfway through. Two things to know about that correction: it is deliberate, and the second version is the answer. A speaker who says M-A-C — sorry, M-C-K-E-N-Z-I-E has just told you the answer is McKenzie.
The letters that go wrong
Spoken letters are much closer to each other than written ones, and under time pressure a few pairs cause almost all the damage:
- M and N. Far and away the most common.
- B, P, V, D, E, G, T, C — every one of them is a consonant plus “ee”, and said quickly they blur.
- S and F, and S and X.
- I and Y, and A and E in some accents.
- “Double”. Double L means two Ls. People write the word double into the name about as often as you would expect.
Some speakers also use a word to disambiguate — S for sugar, F for Freddie. The letter is the answer; the word is scaffolding and does not go in the box.
Hyphens, apostrophes and capitals inside a name
- Hyphenated surnames keep the hyphen and capitalise both halves: Smith-Jones, Hart-Davies.
- Apostrophes belong where they are said: O’Brien, O’Neill. The letter after the apostrophe is a capital.
- Mc and Mac normally carry a capital on the next letter: McKenzie, MacDonald. If the speaker spells it, follow the spelling.
- Van, de, von are usually lower case inside a name but capitalised at the start: van der Berg.
First name or surname?
Read the question before the recording starts. Surname, family name and last name all mean the same thing; first name, given name and forename all mean the other. A form being filled in on the recording will often supply both, and writing the wrong one is a mark lost to inattention rather than to English.
Practise these
Letter-taking is a motor skill. It improves quickly with dictation and not at all with reading. The trainer will spell names at you in five accents and tell you exactly which letter you dropped.
Practise personal names by dictation
The Spelling trainer says a word once, in the accent you pick, and checks what you typed letter by letter — then gives you back only the words you missed.
Open the Spelling trainer →Three days free opens every test — Listening, Reading, Writing and Spelling — plus Vocabulary and Grammar in the app.
Questions people ask
Do I need capital letters for names?
Write a name the way a name is written: a capital at the start, and a capital after a hyphen or an apostrophe. It is normal English and it never costs you anything.
What if the speaker corrects the spelling halfway through?
The correction is the answer. Those false starts are put in on purpose, so listen past the first attempt.
Is “S for sugar” part of the answer?
No. The letter is the answer; the word is only there to make the letter unmistakable.
The other five groups
- Numbers and dates — Phone numbers, prices, times, reference codes and the date — the Part 1 answers that are lost to a digit, not to English.
- Days and months — Wednesday, February, Tuesday and Thursday — twelve words and seven words, and a surprising number of lost marks.
- Place names — Street, Road, Avenue, and the town name the speaker spells out letter by letter at exactly the wrong moment.
- Plurals — The missing s, the words that are already plural, and the gap that has to agree with the sentence around it.
- Double letters — Accommodation, necessary, committee, occurred — the words where the only question is how many of each letter.
And the whole picture, with the marking rule and the accents, is on the Spelling trainer page. The words themselves come out of the Listening tests, which run in the computer-delivered interface here.
The marking rule — "words with spelling errors in the Reading and Listening tests will be marked as incorrect" — is IDP’s own wording on How to improve your spelling and Common spelling mistakes, both checked 2 October 2026; the same pages say British and American spellings are both accepted as long as you stay consistent. "You will hear the recordings once only" is from the official IELTS Listening format page, checked 2 October 2026. The two minutes to check at the end of the computer-delivered test, and the fact that the screen has no spell-check, are per the British Council’s paper versus computer guidance, checked 2 October 2026. The six groups of words below are how this trainer organises practice, not an official list. IELTS Computer is not affiliated with IDP, British Council or Cambridge.