Aoife?

Love Aoife! My husband is Irish and we are deliberating between Aoife, Niamh or Aoibhinn for our pink bump. X

I think Aoife is a lovely name and, having known a couple of English ones, it's easy enough to pronounce.

I wanted a Caiomhe for a girl if I had anymore but would probably go for the bastardised version of Keeva if in England. Beautiful name. I also have a European name which is quite rare in the UK (well quite rare worldwide). You eventually get used to people getting it wrong. Mostly get compliments though.

Very popular name here. Such a pretty name simple and classic.
I say E-fa.

Also, I love Aoife (sp? ). Honestly, there are worse things in life than having to tell someone how to say or spell your name.

I have a name that is tricky to know how to pronounce from the spelling alone, and I don't currently live in the country that the name is from. People often can't say (or spell) my name, but I love it, and I often get positive comments about it.

Bloody hell.

I DO find a lot of new names difficult to get to grips with. Doesn't make me ignorant or uncaring.

I take the time to make sure I am pronouncing them properly but it takes me time. It doesn't come naturally to me.

If I have never heard a name before it might take me ages to get it embedded in my brain.

I have very few 'English' names on my caseload. The parents of the children often struggle with my name but after a while we all get it without any angst or recriminations.

An Aoife started at our school a few years ago and nobody had any idea how to pronounce it.

I know these type of names are lovely, but I think they're better kept to the country of origin otherwise the poor child spends its life suffering mispronunciation or explaining how it's said to other people.

A shame, but that's my experience anyway.

(sorry, it would be Niw. Had to check, I'm as rusty as an ancient Roman.)

He transposed runes into Latin letters. It's convoluted. To write Niamh in Latin, a more effective transcription would be Newe.

Ogham

'Not a great job done, in my opinion.'

I'm sure if you tried a bit harder you could be even more dismissive.

Giving this a (very little) more thought: no other language, to my knowledge, uses the Latin alphabet in such a very different way. Isn't it due to some tortuous method of transposing a runic alphabet, which doesn't even operate with sequential letters, into some semblance of Latin? Not a great job done, in my opinion.

(Although the runic alphabets were used to pass coded messages between rebels, so perhaps that priest knew what he was doing after all )

Yes, we understand that, Math. Difference is that, knowing the languages have different sounds, people change either the spelling or the pronunciation of their name to suit. Just as I did, when I went to live in a country whose language doesn't include the combination of sounds in my name. It is impossible to pronounce in that language. Changing the spelling wouldn't help, so I changed the pronunciation - my other alternative would have been to translate it into a local equivalent.

Your complaint would be reasonable if speaking about English people in Ireland & not bothering to try.

I take your point about the teacher, though - she seems to be absurdly passive aggressive about it.

Dymphna is Dim-fna.

Garlic -- I'm not talking about someone looking for the first time at a name spelled on a page and doing their best. I'm talking about a situation where a teacher has to remind herself 'E for elephant' before saying the name of the Aoife in her class. Really? She didn't hear the name the day before and all the previous days back as far as last September? The previous year's teacher never mentioned it? She doesn't hear the other children saying it when they talk together? I'm also talking about a situation where someone has heard the name and repeated it but gets all bogged down when they see it written despite the fact that many English words are not one bit phonetic, but disbelief can apparently be suspended for those words, and they can be pronounced correctly in spite of the GHs or the vowel combinations that could go two or more ways.

Do English people know and understand the fact that German, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Icelandic, Italian, Latin, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Polish, Catalan, Turkish, Romanian, Slovenian, Czech, Croatian, Welsh, Scots, Slovak, Finnish, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian written languages use the same alphabet yet assign sounds to the letters and combinations of letters that are not found in English? Why not understand that Irish is similar in its assignment of different sounds to the same letters?

You've nailed the eefa/eefer difference, Math. Irish & West Country accents, and some Scots ones, are rhotic - the rest of us have silent "r"s by comparison.

I think it's unnecessarily rude of you to dismiss us all as ignorant & ill-mannered, though. When an English person takes a best stab at pronunciation, we end up with something like "Neeam" and "Ayofa". It's not on to tell us Irish uses the same alphabet in a different way and we should just fucking learn.

How do you say Dymphna (?) is that the right spelling?
I used to love reading Edna O'Brian books when I was younger but I did struggle with some of the Irish names.

CoreyHaim, that says a lot more about the lack of intelligence and manners of the people your DD deals with than it does about the name..

I don't understand how people can't just listen to a name and get on with their lives once the two simple syllables have been remembered. So it isn't spelled the way English phonetics work? Big effing deal.

It's not as if there aren't a gazillion words in English that are 'exceptions to the rule' and nobody has to pause and think of elephants (for example) before remembering simple words whose spellings are irregular. It boils down to pure rudeness to make a dog's dinner out of someone's name more than once.

It will be incorrectly spelt and pronounced for evermore.... but it is a very pretty name I know an Aoife (lol, I just had to look up the spelling ) and I cannever remember how to spell or say it. I do try but ,to my mind, the pronounciation has no relation to the spelling. It seems like a random collection of letters.
I get the impression that it's getting a lot more popular so more and more people at least those who are not rubbish spellers will recognise it.

I can easily hear the difference between eefa and eefer. (I'm from the West Country too)

I have a foriegn name with an English pronounciation so nobody can spell or pronounce my name either. I can't say it's ever bothered me although that may because I really don't mind if my name is mispronounced. I also often use my 'simple' middle name if I have to give my name in a shop or over the phone.

I really like this name, although when we had one in our school the only way her teacher could remember the pronunciation was to think "e for elephant" beforehand to remind her of the eefa sound. Therefore in my head it is always eefa elephant (never out loud though, we always made a real effort to pronounce it correctly!)

Niamh. Lovely name as well.

Oh, got it. I know 4 of them too!

I know three small Aoifes, lovely name (lovely girls!)
From the south-east though not living there now, Eefa and Eefer sound identical when I say them.
Trying to figure out what the Irish name beginning with N is?

Ny-am
Nee am
Neyem
Ni-ah
NYAMPH GRRRR

I have the Irish name beginning with an N for my dd 12. She hates it, constantly has to correct it. Is always being called stupid names as they read it the way it looks. I wouldnt do it again. Started to hate it about age 7 when she was going to cluba and didnt have me to correct people. I see her cringe when they say a name which is not hers. Dd2 and 3 have names which read as they are written

Love it. But I giggle when I think of the vicar of dibley (purposely) pronouncing it 'heifer' regarding a love rival.

I wouldn't have a clue how to pronounce it.

Now it has been explained I do recognise it and its a nice name but I would imagine that there are quite a few people like me who wouldn't know how to say it.

But I work with lots of children with names I don't 'know' so that is not a good enough reason for not choosing it

If you like it, use it.