I have a made up name, "Bunar," and I want the u to sound like you, rather than oo. Is there an accent I can put above u to tell readers to pronounce it this way?
edit: feel free to explain how this is opinion based in any way. or why you bothered to close a month old question that's already been answered and accepted
As a native English speaker, I would pronounce the name as you intended it to be pronounced (buːnə). With other languages, the pronuciation of vowel is denoted by accents over vowels, but English doesn't use accents and uses other ways to indicate vowel pronunciation. For example, if the intention that the vowel should be a much shorter sound, Bunar would be spelt with a double n, i.e Bunnar (bʌnə).
English also frequently places an e after a consonant to denote a longer vowel sound, e.g., take.
You're good to go.
The problem you have is that readers pronounce a strange name the way they think it should be pronounced. No amount of accents will fix that.
Accents are pretty meaningless to the average English speaker and even when they are not, many choose the pronunciation of an accented letter that accords with a foreign language they are familiar with.
You might have some success with Byunar...
If you want the unfamiliar (and arguably non-English) name Bunar to be pronounced /bju:/ then one way is to mimic the Welsh name Beuno. Spell your name Beunar; the /bju:/ first syllable actually makes the second syllable into a longer /nɑ:ʳ/ as well.
Maybe consider an umlaut over the ‘u,’ which is commonly used with German words like führer. No guarantee that your readers will interpret it appropriately but if you’re going to go the accent route (as opposed to a change in spelling or a decision to not care), I believe this would be the right choice.
