A handful of rules per language and you can read any name you meet — and often guess what the cheese is like from the name alone.
Most names are place names
A great many cheese names are simply the village or region where the cheese was born. Brie is a region east of Paris, gouda a Dutch city, cheddar a gorge village in south-west England. So being able to read the name tells you the country as well. Conversely, looking up an unfamiliar name on a map tells you a lot about the cheese: an Alpine foothill suggests something large and firm, a Mediterranean island suggests salt and brine. The name is the cheese's address.
Names that tell you where they came from:
Sometimes the name is just the animal
Pecorino comes from pecora, Italian for sheep — it means, more or less, sheep cheese. Chèvre is simply the French word for goat, and the bufala in mozzarella di bufala is a water buffalo. Ricotta means recooked. The name is already information. When you meet an unfamiliar one, look up what the word means: the answer usually tells you what the cheese is made from and how.
Names that are already information:
French — the final consonant is usually silent
This is why roquefort does not end in a hard t, and camembert likewise. The vowels before it carry the weight instead. A couple more rules take you most of the way: ch makes a sh sound, which is why chèvre begins as shev. And accents over vowels are not decoration — they set the sound, as in comté. If a name looks nothing like the way it sounds, that is the rule doing its work rather than a mistake in your reading.
The ones where the last letter goes quiet:
Italian — say every letter
Almost nothing is silent, which makes it the easy one. A few rules: ch is a hard k, gn is close to ny. Ci and ce are chee and che; gi and ge are jee and je — hence parmigiano. Italian also puts the stress on the second-to-last syllable as a rule, so mascarpone lands on the po. That single habit makes Italian cheese names sound far more natural.
Say these exactly as they are written:
Dutch and German — sounds made in the throat
In Dutch, gouda begins with a scraped sound at the back of the throat, closer to howda than to the English version — but English pronunciation is what travelled, so that is what most of the world says. Dutch labels also carry jong, belegen and oud for young, medium and aged. Swiss cheeses mix German and French names: emmental means the valley of the Emme, while gruyère is a French-speaking town.
Where spelling and spoken sound drift furthest apart:
Spanish — largely as written
Manchego means, adjectivally, from La Mancha — the description became the name. Spanish spelling is fairly faithful, so reading it as written usually works. The exceptions: j and g take a rough throaty h, and ll lands near a y. Spanish labels also state ageing directly. Semicurado is medium, curado is aged, viejo is well aged. Two manchegos with different words on the label taste noticeably different.
Read this one as it looks:
The ageing words are worth memorising
One short word on a label tells you the intensity. Affiné or vieux in France, stagionato in Italy, oud in the Netherlands, curado in Spain all mean aged. For young, French says jeune and Dutch says jong. English-speaking producers use mild, medium, sharp and extra sharp. Knowing these lets you pick the mild one and the strong one off the same shelf — and when no ageing time is printed, this word is often the only clue available.
These carry an ageing word on the label:
English has its own settled pronunciations
English speakers say gruyère as something like groo-YAIR, which is not quite the French but is thoroughly established. This happens a lot: parmigiano becomes parmesan, chèvre becomes shev. Which is correct depends on the room. Speaking to someone from the country, aim for the original; speaking English, use the English convention, because it communicates better. Insisting on a perfect accent that nobody understands helps nobody.
These settled differently in English:
The same cheese travels under different names
One cheese can wear several names depending on where it is sold, which is worth knowing before you conclude a shop does not stock it. Emmental, Emmentaler and, in much of North America, simply Swiss cheese are the same thing. Parmigiano Reggiano becomes parmesan, though outside Europe that word covers a great deal else besides. Chèvre is sold as goat cheese, queso de cabra and Ziegenkäse. Even the spelling shifts: gouda in English, Goudse kaas at home. None of this is error — names get reshaped by whoever adopts them. But it does mean the useful question at a counter is often what the cheese is like rather than what it is called.
When in doubt, listen
Every cheese page on this site has a button that speaks the name aloud, in the original language and in English. Written pronunciation guides can only get so close, and hearing it once beats reading three lines of respelling. French names in particular are hard to guess from the page. Play it a few times, repeat it, and it sticks quickly.
What actually works at the counter
Several things matter more than a perfect accent. First, say the beginning of the name clearly — if the front is crisp, a mumbled ending is usually forgiven. Second, add the country and the type: say French bloomy-rind and the pronunciation stops mattering. Third, show the word or a photograph, which is the most reliable method of all. The worst outcome is not asking at all for fear of saying it wrong. The people behind the counter say these names every day and will recognise a rough approximation instantly.