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Baby names

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Can I please ask French and Irish speakers (or anyone really) about Eoin and Owen?

29 replies

FindTheLightSwitchDarren · 01/10/2017 13:45

How would you pronounce these please?

I would probably say oh-win for both, (non Irish speaking, Irish woman here).

The reason I ask is a bit complicated, but it's to do with how Owen is pronounced in French. Owen, pronounced oh-wen, sounds like the letters o and n in French - I read a thread on here recently where a boy wanted to change his name as he lived in France and hated the o n thing - c'est oh-wen sounds like c-o-n, which is a derogatory word in French)! We have (vague) ties to France and it isn't beyond the realms of possibility that we could end up living there at some point. So, is Eoin more likely to be pronounced oh-win than Owen iyswim?

We are also considering Rowan / Rohan.

Finding boy names really difficult!

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FindTheLightSwitchDarren · 01/10/2017 14:01

X post Autumn! I used to know a Scottish Eoighann (so?), pronounced Euan / Ewan, so yeo-an makes sense for Eoin!

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FindTheLightSwitchDarren · 01/10/2017 13:59

In French, (I speak French but not Irish), Eoin would probably be more like Ewan with a soft N I think. The do have words with eo in them, but it would probably be eh-yo, so eh-yo-wan I think (with a very soft n)?

The thing is Owen is usuall oh-win in English, but I suspect because it's written with an e then in French people pronounce is as written - oh-wen. Or is Owen more like oh-wen in some English accents too?

This I all ludicrously complicated I know. Maybe I should just discount it.

OP posts:
Autumnfieldsofgold · 01/10/2017 13:57

Just to confuse you, in Scotland Eoin is pronounced "yeo in"

Sorry not helpful at all!

drquin · 01/10/2017 13:54

I'd consider whether the French would even pronounce Eoin anything like "oh-wen".
Until I moved to ireland, I loved in Scotland and had only ever heard Eoin pronounced the same as Ian.

Only in ireland did I come across the "oh-wen" pronounciation.