A system and method for entering a destination into a navigation system, usually a vehicle navigation system, that uses phonetic letter families, or groups of letters which sound similar, to improve the reliability and accuracy of speech recognition. The method involves grouping each letter of the English alphabet into a family of letters which sound similar, such as A, J, and K. When a destination name is spelled by a user, each letter is recognized in terms of the phonetic letter family to which it belongs. This phonetic equivalent spelling is compared to the navigation database of street, city, and state names, which has also been converted to its phonetic equivalent spelling. If a match is found, the user is asked to confirm that this is the desired destination.