Quote Originally Posted by TATY
The letter J is pronounced as the english Y in most languages.
E.g. in German, the name Jan is pronounced "yan".
So Й can be transliterated as J, but not usually for English.
Russian has no letter for the English J sound, so it uses the combination Дж. Jared would be spelt Джэрад.
You may say why use Э instead of A? It's because the Э is actually closer to the American English sound man, pan. Russian A is too open for these sounds. E.g. Джарад would aound like Jar-rаd.

I met a woman in Odessa whoes name was Жанна = Janna
That is why I thought Jared would be spelled as Жаред

But now that I think about it Джордж Буш = George Bush