Scottish names in South West England...

27 replies

Kittypillar · 03/01/2018 03:12

Me and my husband have been talking baby names a lot recently and have gotten into a discussion about how people would cope with Scottish baby names where we live.

My mum's side of the family are from Scotland and we really like a certain few names from there. Ones on the list so far are:
Mhairi
Elspeth (although inevitably they'd probably be called Elsie or Ellie for short)
Iona
The only boy names my partner likes that are of that ilk are Ewan and Rory (he insists it can't be the Scottish spelling), which hopefully wouldn't cause anyone too many headaches where we live!

But anyway, our worry is that, even if we love those names enough to use one of them, we do live in the South West of England and baby would probably grow up here, at least for a good portion of their life - would it be a real pain to pick names like that? What does everyone think?

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Kittypillar · 03/01/2018 03:33

Sorry, I did actually know about the difference in how you pronounce Rory and Ruaraidh and meant to say as much, but then I am writing this at 3:30am, so you'll have to forgive that as a brain blip... So yes, husband said he'd want English version of the name.
The Mhairi thing on the other hand I did not know - I have a family friend called Mhairi (she pronounces it Va-Ree) but you learn something new everyday I guess!

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tabulahrasa · 03/01/2018 03:23

Well Mhairi isn't technically a name, it's what you call Mairi when you're talking to her and Ruaraidh and Rory are pronounced differently, it's not just a different spelling... so, you'd maybe be better sticking to the ones no-one is likely to get wrong, because if you can't be sure of them, no-one else is likely to be.

If you're going for straightforward in English ones though, I'm not seeing why it would be a problem?

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