How to pronounce gyro

Short answer: for the Greek sandwich, say YEE-roh (/ˈjiːroʊ/), with a Y sound at the start. It's the first pronunciation in Merriam-Webster and American Heritage, and the closest to the Greek γύρος (YEE-ros). YEER-oh (/ˈjɪroʊ/) comes first in Cambridge, Dictionary.com and Oxford's American dictionary, and Merriam-Webster also lists ZHEER-oh. JY-roh is how you say gyro when it means a gyroscope. Plenty of Americans use it for the sandwich too, and some dictionaries list it second, but Merriam-Webster and Cambridge keep it for the device.

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Is it YEE-roh, YEER-oh or JY-roh?

Americans have argued about this for decades. Here is what the dictionaries say about the sandwich:

British dictionaries are different. For the sandwich, Cambridge gives British speakers YEER-oh (/ˈjɪə.rəʊ/) or JEER-oh (/ˈdʒɪə.rəʊ/), and Oxford's British dictionary lists gyro only as short for gyroscope, said JY-roh. The word trips up British speakers too: in a 2026 survey of 2,000 UK adults for Škoda UK, gyro was ninth on the list of Britain's most mispronounced words.

People are just as split. When the sandwich chain Quiznos polled almost 8,800 Americans on Twitter in 2018, 45% said "yeer-oh", 32% "jai-ro", 12% "gee-ro" and 11% "hee-ro". It wasn't a scientific survey, but it shows how mixed usage is. The debate even got its own song: in 2017 The Tonight Show aired a music video, "I Don't Know How to Pronounce Gyro", with Luke Bryan and Jimmy Fallon, and the street vendor at the end settles it with "yeer-oh".

So which should you use? If you want the version that's closest to Greek and listed first in most dictionaries, say YEE-roh or YEER-oh. JY-roh will be understood at any American food truck, but some people will hear it as a mistake.

Why is gyro pronounced "yee-roh"?

Gyro is two words with the same spelling:

• The gyroscope word came into English as part of scientific vocabulary, like gyroscope itself, and was anglicized long before the sandwich arrived: gy- became "jy", as in gyrate. Merriam-Webster dates this gyro to 1910.
• The sandwich word arrived much later, around 1970, with Greek restaurants in cities like Chicago and New York, and it kept a Greek-like sound. Merriam-Webster dates its first known use in English to 1971.

In Greek, γύρος means "turn" or "circle", after the meat turning on its vertical spit. The Greek letter gamma before an ee sound is soft, close to the English Y in yes. That's why the sandwich starts with "yee", not "jy" or a hard G.

One more twist: in Greek, gyros with an S is the singular. English speakers heard the S as a plural and created the singular gyro. So "a gyros" isn't a mistake, it's the Greek form.

How to say gyro step by step

1. Start with a Y, as in yes. Not a J and not a G.
2. Say the stressed vowel: "ee" as in see (YEE-roh) or "eer" as in ear (YEER-oh).
3. Finish with a light "roh": a quick R, then "oh".

Keep the stress on the first syllable: YEE-roh, not yee-ROH. To sound Greek, tap the R once with the tip of your tongue, like the R in Spanish pero, and add the S: YEE-ros.

Practice in a sentence

• I'll have a chicken gyro with extra tzatziki.
• In Athens, order a gyros: YEE-ros, with the S.
• Is it YEE-roh or JY-roh? The guy at the counter says YEE-roh.

Then try more Greek food words. American pronunciations, from the Cambridge Dictionary:

Other food words borrowed from other languages trip people up in the same way: see how to pronounce tzatziki, açaí, gnocchi and pho, or our list of 45 commonly mispronounced words.

What is a gyro?

A gyro is meat cooked on a vertical rotisserie, sliced and wrapped in pita with tomato, onion and tzatziki. In Greece it's usually pork, often with fries inside the wrap. The American gyro is different: a factory-made cone of ground beef and lamb. Chicago companies began mass-producing these cones in the early 1970s, and they spread across the country. Gyros, Turkish döner and Middle Eastern shawarma all come from the same idea of meat roasted on a vertical spit.

Sources

• Merriam-Webster — gyro, pronunciations and dates of first use
• Cambridge Dictionary — gyro; Dictionary.com — gyro
• Oxford Learner's Dictionaries — gyro (American English); American Heritage Dictionary — gyro
• Wiktionary — gyro and γύρος; Wikipedia — Gyros
• QSR Magazine — Quiznos gyro pronunciation poll, October 2018
• Škoda UK — Britain's most mispronounced words, 2026
• KMTS — Luke Bryan and Jimmy Fallon's gyro song, March 2017
• The New York Times — history of the American gyro, July 2009 (archived copy)