Keeva for a girl

😂 Gotta be B or D

How should Caitlin be pronounced?

Yes, call her Keeva. Then, have another daughter and call her Caitlin. Pronounced Kate-Lynn.

I have the Worst Irish Name Ever. Thankfully, my initial sounds like a name in its own right (except in Ireland, where it means a fanny!) and I generally go by that.

i'm glad we never attempted to stage it ourselves at my school, the accents would definitely have been horrendous! Plus I'm pretty sure we weren't pronouncing Maire right...

I didn't study Translations but if you want to know about Friel's other set plays, Dancing at Lughnasa or Philadelphia, Here I Come, I'm your woman

Just jumping back in because we studied Translations by Brian Friel at school, in England. Never got to see it staged, but we read it and discussed it. I found it really moving and I still think about it sometimes, nearly 20 years later.

@TatianaBis I suspect people pronounce Xavier the way they do in English because that's how they pronounce the Xavier in St Francis Xavier (which I only know from a couple of schools named after him). I think at some point, even if you don't like it, it's probably better to accept that people will often end up pronouncing introduced names into English in an anglicised way. Just as how, for example, the English language pronunciation of Charlotte, which was introduced a couple of centuries ago, doesn't really reflect the French pronunciation any more. I agree that the "Ex ay vier" pronunciation is an abomination, however.

@SeanChailleach
No, I haven't seen the play, I must look out for it, thanks

@LizzieAnt absolutely. I don't know when Kevin was put on the name, probably Early Classical?
Place names are complicated anyway. Have you ever seen the play "Translations" by Brian Friel? It's about the Ordnance Survey men going around literally making up names to put on the maps.

I had a colleague by that name, but she spelt it the Irish way Caiomhe!

Aren't you all charm @B0G0F

French and Spanish versions = Zavi eh and Sa vi er (Catalan is Sh)

Much more similar to each other than to Zayvier or worse Ex ay vier.

Kevin is all the evidence we have, so it probably sounded like that
@SeanChailleach - I agree that when names are anglicised they attempt to reproduce the phonics (perfectly or imperfectly) of the name as it was pronounced at that time - and this may not be exactly how it is said in Irish today. However, I think Cóemgen is too far in the past? It's unlikely that the pronunciation the 5th/6th century saint used was the version used when the name was anglicised centuries later. That's what I meant upthread. I'm very much open to correction here though.
Incidentally, TatianaBis, like Prospering I'd pronounce Caoimhín something like QueeVEEN/KweeVEEN (the closest approximations in English). The sound isn't in English so it's hard to represent it exactly. Where I am (Munster) the final syllable tends to be emphasised.

SeanChailleach I think phonetic preservation by anglicisation is sometimes more successful than others. The Irish name of the town in which I live has not been successfully preserved, for example. When I was a child the older people in the area, including my grandmother, called it by its Irish name. The English spelling did not completely match the Irish sounds - why, I'm not sure, as they were simple sounds that could be easily represented in both languages. The name of the town is now always pronounced in English to match the English spelling and demonstrates a quite recent evolution away from the original Irish.
Anglicisation can be a useful tool in the way you mention, but it's very much an imperfect one imo.

Whoever mentioned Peig,I just had a flashback to school.Not good.
Haha, yes. Nobody who'd suffered through that for Leaving Cert would ever consider it as a name.

No they don't. Bore off.

Why is it only Irish names get a pasting on this site.
Any other nationality doesn't get the piss ripped out of them about names.

Whoever mentioned Peig,I just had a flashback to school.Not good.

@B0G0F

Ohhh yes they are.

I don't like the spelling but least it is obvious how to pronounce it. I'm in central Scotland and my cousin named his little girl Caoimhe. I had never heard of it or the Irish spelling I think she'll be correcting the pronouncing of it her whole life.

Well, ish. 'Caoi' isn't really 'Kwee'.

[quote SeanChailleach]@TatianaBis
Caomhín
In Ulster Irish the stress is on the first syllable so KEEVin. In other dialects the fada attracts some stress so I think Keeveen.
Or whatever the owner of the name prefers.[/quote]
KweevEEN in my part of Munster.

The French and Spanish pronunciations are similar.
No, they are not.

Also I'm not sure what you mean by 'trailer park', but I doubt you mean my experience of people named Keeva, well-educated and respectable.

@TatianaBis
Caomhín
In Ulster Irish the stress is on the first syllable so KEEVin. In other dialects the fada attracts some stress so I think Keeveen.
Or whatever the owner of the name prefers.

The French and Spanish pronunciations are similar.

It's not even pronounced the same by the French and the Spanish @TatianaBis.

It’s not remotely Irish! It’s also a wee bit trailer park.