Ciorstaidh

Gerrof, what a beautiful and lovely name you have. I wish it was mine...

Oh, I'm sorry. It looks like it was produced by a random password generator. But who am I? Maybe I'm just unfamiliar with it. :-)

Hi OP, sorry I wondered off! Yes, it's a Scottish Gaelic spelling for Kirsty.

I am a Gaelic speaker. As others say, the gaelic spelling is traditionally a Cailleachs name (old lady, he he) but it's become a fashion again. Personally , I really like the pronunciation. Common to be called Chrissie too

Soontobe - yes, I think Ciar does mean dark (I'm a Gaelic learner, not a Gaelic speaker). I've not personally heard it used as a name but it's an obvious shortening for Ciaran. Actually, adding 'an' to a word in Gaelic makes it a diminuitive, so Ciaran really means little Ciar. Also, the feminising of Ciaran to Ciara is increasingly common for girls - I guess in parallel to the increasing popularisation of the Anglicised version of the name - Keira. The are lots of names with Gaelic roots that are not used by Gaelic speakers - e.g., Hamish, Fiona, etc. - and aren't proper Gaelic - I don't think that means they aren't 'proper' names. I like Ciar!

And I can confirm that Ciorstaidh is not that unusual in Scotland - it's becoming increasingly common for non-Gaelic speakers to use Gaelic spellings.

"Though I will admit that whoever came up with it knows their Irish, as the spelling is spot on for how you would pronounce it like 'Kirsty', if it was an actual Irish word."

In Irish it would be pronounced Kyursthuy.

Fuckin' 'orrible.

I'm sure the Gaelic pronunciation must be nicer.

Thanks iismum - very interesting :) as I said further up the thread, my younger son is Ciar - I wanted Keir and my OH liked Ciaran. So I got the name and he got the spelling. As Ciaran means the little dark one and we knew he wouldn't be little (he then turned blond too!!) we went with Ciar. When I came back to work after Mat leave, there was a new woman who was native to the western isles and she told me that it does mean dark but would never be used as a name - can you shed any light?

Yes, when you address people in Gaelic you (sometimes, but not always) change the way the name is spelt - by putting an 'h' after the first letter and an 'i' before the last, which often changes - sometimes quite radically, the way it is pronounced.

So Mairi (pr. Mar-ree) becomes Mhairi (pr. Var-ree), Seumas (Gaelic for James, pr. Shay-mus) becomes Sheumais (pr. Hamish - which is where this Anglo-Gaelic name comes from - you'll hear it a lot amongst Gaelic speakers, but it's not used as an actual name), and I think Coistaidh would become Choirstaidh, with the first syllable pr. as in 'loch'. But my daughter's name - Eilidh - doesn't change because it begins with a vowel.

Gaelic names are v hard to read if you're trying to use English pronunciation, but the spelling system is a lot more consistent than English once you know it.

badtime - someone said to me once that it was pronounced Vari when you were shouting at the them :o Sure that is not exactly true either.

We just liked the name.

We got back in touch with some family that we hadn't heard from for years not long after my eldest was born to find that my Cousin had two children her boy had the same name as my new baby and her daughter was Mairi - the name we would have used had he been a girl - he looked more like a Mairi than a Kirsty if that makes sense!!

Neither of the names have been used in the family before, just pure coincidence. No2 son could have well been a Mairi so we would have matched completely - it wouldn't have put me off using it - my cousins children are much older and we don't mix in the same circles except for funerals nowadays.

Gerrof, not exactly.

The name is 'Mairi', (pronounced 'mari'). A Gaelic speaker, speaking to Mairi would address her as 'Mhairi' (pronounced 'vari'). Sort of.

Custard here too.

I'm going to change the spelling of my name to this. So I will not be an outcast with a chav K name on MN

Have to agree its Scottish Gaelic, can't comment on the spelling but with the Kirsty's I know it's pronounced 'kirstack' as soon as they are north of Oban.

As Chaos says. 2 of my aunts are Ciorstaidh (though they'd always write in English as Chrissie) and we tend to call them Ciorstag (pr. Kirstack), but that's the diminutive form generally I think. We're from Western Isles too.

...and the reason I remembered the name was because Kirsty was one of our top choices for our boys if they had been girls - other choice was Mairi. So, when I came across people with the Gaelic spelling of the name we had liked it caught my eye. Not that we will be having any more and I think I'd be tempted to keep it simple - it's my OH that has the interesting spelling bug, not me. I did win when he wanted to spell Craig "Creag". We have an Irish surname that people presume is Scottish too.

it was me that posted it - it's gaelic probably scottish rather than Irish given that Kirsty is more commonly a Scottish name rather than Irish, but I find that with a lot of the Scots/Irish gaelic stuff the lines are not very clear.
I have a Ciar - we thought we were choosing the Scots gaelic spelling but it could very well be Irish - when we named my son there was not the big Internet community and resources to check with. btw I know that Keir has a completely different root - my OH liked Ciaran and I liked Keir so it was a compromise - plus we didn't think he would be little - which he isn't :o

I've come across a couple of Ciorstaidhs before.

Looks to me like some leaned on their keyboard and pressed send lol.....looks like a completely made up name and if nobody had said I wouldn't of had a bloomin' clue how on earth it could possibly be a name let alone how to pronounce it or what it was supposed to be lol!

I did actually intend to say in previous posts that it might be scots gaelic rather than Irish! The spelling looks more like Irish to me though, is that the spelling in scots gaelic?

Have to agree with oscar, I think it looks a bit cumbersome.

It's fairly common in Scotland as Gaelic for Kirsty

I like it, although where am from (western isles) it's a very traditional name.