Too many vowels, too many strange pronunciation rules, too… just too fucking Irish:
- Saoirse (“sear-sha”, or if you want to mess with them, “sasha”)
- Ciarán (“kier-ahn”)
- Aisling (“ash-ling”)
- Eoin (“oh-win”)
- Bronagh / Bronaugh (“Broh-na” — with a very slight “ch” at the end, pronounced like the Scottish “loch”) — see also Clodagh.
I think they just have these names to fuck with ordinary English-speaking people, so that they can mock us for not knowing how to pronounce them. They’re almost as bad as the French.
Wankers.
There’s a “reaction channel” featuring Irish folks that I enjoy watching. Some of their cast’s names include:
Niamh — Neev
Grainne — Grawn-yuh
Eadaoin — Ay-deen
Tadhg — Tie-guh
Yeah, Irish spellings make no sense whatsoever.
What, are they in competition with the negro’s to see who can come up with the stupidest names?
I dated an Irish girl whose name is Caoimhe and whose sister’s name is Siobhan.. Interestingly enough, they had two brothers, William and Richard Bill and Dick).
Speaking as an Irishman, I’d like to point out that all names you’re not familiar with are often difficult to pronounce……
But we all know how to say “Arshole”!
St. Patrick did not get all of the snakes out of the Emerald Isle.
The African-American community is not much different.
There was a girl named Shithead but pronounced Sha-theed (because the dash don’t be silent)
Oh, I thought you were talking about names like, Patrick FitzGerald and Gerald FitzPatrick….
Grainne pronounced Gro nya
Aine pronounced ou nya
But seeing as I live here, I don’t find them that difficult anymore.
Gaelic names are spelled phonetically but, like Polish names (or any other language for that matter), you have to learn the rules. Blame the English for the funny spelling: To get some of the phonemes in Gaelic they used multiple letters. For example “amha” is pronounced like the “ow” in cow. This causes me some amusement when hearing illiterate pagans trying to pronounce “Samhain”
BTW, when I first saw the name “Du Toit” my American phonetic pronunciation came out as “Do Twat”. Probably not what your mother had in mind.
Listen here, Mr. Barbarian: when your ancestors were still running around in blue paint, mine had been oppressing serfs for CENTURIES. (The Black ones came later.)
Whatever, my kids are mamed after my parents, grandparent, etc and everyone struggles with the German names. Is what is.
Example, oldest son Joachim (ˈjoːaχɪm) – named after my father. Everyone either wants to say “Joe-aickim” or pronounce it like Spanish Joaquin (which is the same root but completely different sounds.)
No one gets our last name right either. That is just life as an outlier.
I got it right — aber ich kann ein bisschen Deutsch sprechen.
I have to take issue with you on Ciaran. In Irish and Scottish Gaelic, it means “little dark one” or “little dark-haired one”, which I thought was quite appropriate for my Scottish Terrorist. (I mean terrier…)
I will, however, agree with you on the rest of them, and add one more: Roisin – pronounced ro-sheen. (or “raisin” if you’re ornery)
So many to choose from…
My baby sis, born in Galway, is named Eilis, with accents on the first E and the i. It’s pronounced Ay-lish. When she was graduating from high school here stateside, we went up to the guy who would be calling the names to make sure he knew how to pronounce it. He repeated it after us, got it perfect, and an hour later called on Elijah. /sigh. My car insists she’s Eye-liss when i try to call her using the hands-free option.
On the other hand I’ve trained the autocorrect/autosuggest on my phone to use “autocorrupt”. So I guess eventually the voice stuff will catch up.