Irish names help!

If we reach consensus on this, we should put it up as a pinned tweet on this board

Hi OP, I know somebody who had the exact same dilemma as you and went with Aebhín, Ae as in the ubiquitous cupán tae. They also knew Aoibheann should be Ee-vin as decent amount of knowledge about Irish and how spellings work, but preferred the Ay sound, and didn't mind that they were inventing their own name so to speak. Don't see why you shouldn't use a sound you prefer and spell it that way.

I know an Aedín spelled like that and that RTÉ newscaster Aengus Mac Grianna is Ae too. Added advantage of ae being an accepted spelling of ay in English too, at least if I see Mae/Rae I read it as May/Ray. I don't think the leathan le leathan thing was a thing in old Irish. I didn't realise

I quite like the Éabhaoin spelling suggested above though. And if you wanted to, u could go with little Eve and Éabhaín, though I'd say that slightly differently, because I wouldn't say Éabha as a straightforward Ava, I'd nearly make three syllables of it.

Funny enough I looked at the old Aibfind and Aebfinn spellings (I might have those the wrong way round) and I wonder if they were said 'ay' long ago. Need an old Irish scholar I suppose. Then there's Aidan.

@EarringsandLipstick
Yes, I agree with you that Niall/Nye-al is by far the most widely used. I'm in Munster too and it's the default pronunciation mostly. That doesn't alter the fact that the name is pronounced Neil in the Irish language though. Think of how diall, or ciall or giall are pronounced. Giall means hostage too so Niall of the nine hostages rhymed quite nicely in the original Irish.

[quote nothingseasy]@EarringsandLipstick

I do thank you for you input.

Your tone was aggressive from the start and so perhaps I was a little back to you.

You seem close minded on the issue when a little research would show you it's not as easy as saying "this is how it's said 100%"

I would have liked a more open discussion with you where points are made based on language rather than "that's how Me and my friends have always said it"

If you'd like to continue with more open discussion then I'd love to hear it but if not then that is fine too.
[/quote]
I don't think I was aggressive, just quite frustrated.

I find your post incredibly patronising. You are also entirely misrepresenting what I said - I most certainly did not say, nor imply, that my only point was 'this is how I & my friends say it'.

You're not keen to hear or accept my points. No problem. Others have given you the info you are looking for & Sean's post just now is, as always, incredibly detailed & interesting so I'm sure that'll help too.

Good luck with the baby, whatever you decide re name.

Short story:
The spelling most used for the name is Aoibheann, which originates from Old Irish "oíbind", which comes from "oíb" + "finn"

www.libraryireland.com/names/women/aoibheann-eavan.php
dil.ie/33596

As a word, the Modern Irish spelling is "aoibhinn", and some people do use this spelling for the name.
Why is "Aoibheann" pronounced "Ay-veen" and not "ee-van" by some poeple? This is my theory: that the original name was two words, which today would be written in Modern Irish "Aobh fhinn" or "Aoibh fhinn", except the presence of the bh undoes the lenition of the f and voices it to give the v sound. Conversely, the slender f at the start of "finn" narrows the bh making it more likely to sound like v than w anyway.
"Finn" isn't on teanglann, but the very similar "binn" is:
www.teanglann.ie/en/fuaim/binn has a long nasal i for both Connacht and Munster
This leads me to wonder whether the Old Irish original was actually "oíb binn", which isn't a big stretch (binn usually means sweet-sounding). That would give "Aobh bhinn".
Not sure if you'd want to go with a spelling "Aobh-bhinn" although I think it would satisfy the pronunciation.

That's the short answer.
Off to party in the cistín!

@LizzieAnt

I take the points you're making. That's fair enough.

I still think it's important to realise that many Irish speakers use these names with the pronunciations I've specified, and it's entirely correct that they do so.

Eg in my Munster upbringing, and where Niall is a very common name, it was always 'Nye-al' I heard, including in my frequent trips up Gaeltacht areas!

Here you go @nothingseasy

The pronunciation of both forms is different in the dialects.

This is from @SeanChailleach post & my point too.

I see Sean has been along to clarify her name for you - so I don't need to explain Seán (boy's name) vs Sean (meaning old)!

I am just 😱 at your posts & tone so I'll leave it at this. I live in Ireland. I speak Irish. I know many people who speak Irish. I know many people with Irish names. We are not using 'anglicised' versions of names!

This is how we, Irish speakers, pronounce them.

Connor

@SeanChailleach Really? I'm intrigued, please elaborate

OP, I'm afraid I'm not nearly enough of a linguist to be able to recommend whether you should use a bh rather than an mh, or vice versa, in this case. Their pronunciation varies with their position in a word, on the nearby vowels and also depends on dialect. I'm not at all an expert, but either seem to give your required pronunciation here. Éimhín is an old name already, albeit a male name. Éibhleann (pronounced Ave-lyn with ave rhyming with Dave) is an old Irish female name thought to mean beauty/radiance, so by analogy Éibhín would seem to be pronounced Ave-een.

Not Anglicisation @LizzieAnt much more exciting.

Just quickly:
"Sean chailleach" means old woman. I'm not a boy.

@EarringsandLipstick
I'd consider the Ay-veen version of Aoibheann a very widely used anglicised pronunciation of the name. The Irish language pronunciation of the name is not Ay-veen in any dialect afaik. There's nothing wrong with anglicised versions of names and it's personal choice whether people prefer them or not. (Personally, I love Irish, but still prefer the anglicised Nye-al pronunciation of the name Niall, rather than the Irish language Neil pronunciation, for example.) However, in this case the OP wants an Irish language spelling to match the Ay-veen pronunciation.

forvo.com/word/%C3%A9imh%C3%ADn/
OP, I've linked to an Éimhín pronunciation above. Though it was used as a male name and translates as Evan, this does give the pronunciation you're looking for and has the advantage of being an established Irish language name/spelling (though Eimhín without the fada is also found -as used in the translation for Monasterevin -so there's a bit of confusion here too maybe?)
Éibhín at first glance makes me think of Eibhlín (Eileen), though I know the fada makes all the difference.
Éabhaoin seems fine (though possibly a bit made up for me, but again that's just personal choice.)
The letter combination Aodh also gives the 'ay' sound you're looking for but adding a 'veen' sound to the end would be tricky. (Aodh is a male name, Aodhamair is one feminine version.)

I love Irish, but am not a native speaker OP.

Thank you @nothingseasy.

Best of luck, again.