Reply To: Most Common Surname Among Torah Observant Jews

BS”D

In E”Y every letter is pronounced and it is kohen as if you are speaking of the kohen gadol when learning. I’m multilingual and hang out with a lot of people who speak Ivrit and French so I pronounce it as Ko-in as well – for me “Cone” would be the way I’d pronounce the “yekke” Kohn spelling of the name.

Here in the Russian speaking world the name is Kogan because there is no H in Russian – but in Moscow it is Kogan with a G and here in Ukraine it sounds like it would be written Kojan in Spanish, with a soft Sefardi het in place of the G. (Kilogram here is also kilojram with that sound – it is the standard Ukrainian mispronunciation of the Cyrillic letter with the G sound).