Irish Names

[ad hoc]

Ta both

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

A-deen will get you close.

You can hear it being said in the first seven seconds of this clip.

A good tip for pronouncing Irish names is to type it into Youtube. There will be someone with that name making videos, and they are going to say their name.

[ad hoc]

Thanks. That's Ay as in Way?

[elguapo4]

Ay- deen is the usual way.

[ad hoc]

Can I get a little help please? I;m just about to start work in Cambridge for a month and on Sunday evening i have to introduce my team (who I won't yet have met) to a group of students. One of them is called Eadaoin - how am I pronouncing that? Ta.

[Diable Rouge]

Porn as Gaeilge.

[Flynnie]

You almost never heard Irish being spoken down at the Cultural Centre, other than in the Irish language group that met once a month. My nana, who was from a Gaeltacht in Donegal and spoke Irish as a first language, spoke it almost as a party trick. She never spoke it to her husband, who was from Sligo.

anglicised Irish names used to be very common, especially for girls. There’s about nine Eileens in my family, my aunts are Maureen and Kathleen. A lot of the men are called Emmet, originally after Robert.

There were several kids with Irish language names in my school, but only the Séans were actually from American families. Oh, and Seamus for some reason. But pronounciation was poor, Aisling was A-sling, Caitlín was Kate-lynn. Neither seemed to mind. Caitlín left in fifth grade and went back to Cork, in retrospect it was pretty clear her mum and her didn’t have papers...

[seand]

Irish pronunciation makes some sense once you understand a few rules. It’s less freestyle than English anyway. I'm no expert but some notes......

S at the start of a word is generally pronounced SH, so Sean, Sinead and Seamus start with SH… sounds. But not always. (I'm wondering if this is when followed by a narrow vowel, I'm not sure.)

In a two-consonant digraph the following H softens the other consonant, so BH is pronounced V (in Siobhan), MH is a W sound, SH is a H sound, DH is close to a G sound, etc

Now, there are some constructs where vowel-consonant combinations make vowel sounds (a bit like OUGH is English, I guess.) ADH is pronounced like the English word EYE, so Tadhg sound like the first syllable of Tiger (and inevitably leads to young Tadhg earning the nickname Tiger). SADHBH combines the ADH "eye" sound with the BH V sound, but in this case the initial S is not pronounced SH, leaving you with SADHBH pronounced Sive.... and not SAD HUBUHUH as a friend was called in America. GH is basically not pronounced so Clodagh is Cloda and EOGHAN is effectively one syllable OWN, i.e. Owen. (Also commonly spelled Eoin).

Some confusion comes from fadas not being used in English versions of names. Technically I suppose Sean would be pronounced Shan, but Seán would be Shawn. Seamus Coleman needs the fada on his E, to make it Séamus, ie. Shay-muss. Grainne needs the fada on her A for Gráinne, i.e. Graw-nyeh. Gráinne, incidentally is very close to the Irish for ugly- gránna (grawnah), specially if you pronounce Gráinne, as Graw-nyah rather than Graw-nye

Broad vowels generally take precedence over narrow vowel, I think, anyway! Oisín takes the UH or OH sound of the OI part, and the fada on the i in the second syllable makes it an EE sound so it's Usheen or Ohsheen, rather than rhyming with Hoisin sauce.

There's some additional confusion to be caused by a rule I can barely remember which states that a mid-word consonant should be surrounded with either board or narrow vowels, not both, which leads to the insertion of additional vowels into words. See here http://phouka.com/irish/ir_broadSlender.html

[ursus arctos]

Flynnie, I think that part of the issue for Irish-Americans and those that grew up with them is that the Americanised pronunciations of Irish names (very much a thing in the 60s and 70s among pelople whose kids were born here and no intention of returning) were themselves off. The diaspora to the US at that time was not known for its Gaelic.

[sw2borshch]

Basically,yes. And kevinisme, I suppose - there was a discussion about the name at the dinnertable at Fussbudget's mam & dad's and I pointed out that it's actually Irish, but I don't know if it has the class associations in France as I don't parly voo too bon but am quite keen on opening my trap.

[Levin]

I know it's only wikipedia but are you referring to Kevinism SW2? Or something else?

[sw2borshch]

I have a cousin Oisin and a cousin Ender. Oisin causes the most pronunciation problems.

Anyway, as the people of France and Germany are well aware, Kevin is an American name.

[Flynnie]

I don't know why, but I really struggle with pronouncing Irish names. It took me over 40 years to realise that Niamh isn't pronounced Nee-am. I'm still not sure about Caoimhin (as in Kelleher) but having realised the 'mh' has a 'v' sound then I'm guessing something close to Kevin?

On the other hand I saw a fella called Tadgh on the telly the other day and I literally have no idea how to pronounce it. Tath? Taadth? Tadge? Tag? It shouldn't be that hard, I can make a passable stab at most languages but too many consonants in unexpected combinations does seem to be a blind spot.

You don’t know why? It’s because Irish pronunciation makes no sense.

I was having a drink back home with my friend Mika, whose dad is Irish and who lived in Dublin for several years. It was agreed that learning Irish wouldn’t do us much good, but we’d very much like to learn how to pronounce Irish as we both fuck up pronouncing Irish names on the reg. despite my username being a suffixed version of my first name, and her brother being named Oisín.

[Diable Rouge]

Peadar Tóibín names his new political party Aontú, which means Unity.

[Third rate Leszno]

Ah, I went to school with a Sinead so I knew that one - and Grainne had been handed to me by a commentator on an Irish car rally...

[Third rate Leszno]

Cheers all! Much appreciated.

[Duncan Gardner]

ON-ya (Anne)
GRAWN-ya (Grace)
Muh-RAID (Margaret)
SHIN-aid (Jane)

[Diable Rouge]

Tadhg is essentially pronounced the same as the beginning of Tiger.

[Duncan Gardner]

TIE-g(uh)

[elguapo4]

And Tadgh is Tyge, Irish for Timothy which was the most popular Irish male name in the late nineteenth century, hence taigs and Tim's.

[elguapo4]

Caoimhin is Kevin, it's basically pronounced Keeveen

[Third rate Leszno]

I don't know why, but I really struggle with pronouncing Irish names. It took me over 40 years to realise that Niamh isn't pronounced Nee-am. I'm still not sure about Caoimhin (as in Kelleher) but having realised the 'mh' has a 'v' sound then I'm guessing something close to Kevin?

On the other hand I saw a fella called Tadgh on the telly the other day and I literally have no idea how to pronounce it. Tath? Taadth? Tadge? Tag? It shouldn't be that hard, I can make a passable stab at most languages but too many consonants in unexpected combinations does seem to be a blind spot.

[Duncan Gardner]

Indeed. I did say rough translation. Willy and the Poor Mouth doesn't have quite the same ring.

An animated version of the story was on BBC Alba recently

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Duncan, an Béal Bocht means the poor mouth.

[Duncan Gardner]

The NI team finished outside the medals in the quiz (hosted by London RoI supporters). However I did chat briefly to future supremo and guest of honor Stephen Kenny. He was non-commital about taking the Crusaders job at some future point