Saoirse?

It’s an awful name and the poor kid would have a lifetime of spelling it out. Don’t to that to a child.

my daughter is called Saoirse and we're both English and live in England. if you like a name, use it. Everyone she knows absolutely loves her name.
Before anyone says she will have difficulty with people spelling and pronouncing it at school etc, my name is also hard to spell and pronounce, people had difficulty with it while i was growing up but i never cared and i love my unique name as im sure she will too 😌

You’re kidding, right? I grew up in Central Scotland and sectarianism and segregated education is alive and well! My Mum would have recognised “a Catholic name” at 20 paces.

Now living in Scotland as couldn’t be bothered with the whole lot of it.

As everyone has said OP if in ROI unless right on the border shouldn’t be an issue.

I think you’re missing the point of what I was saying with the examples.

You will of course get Catholics called John, James as well just as you’d get some Protestants called Conor, Owen, Shannon, Kerry etc Lot of crossover with names like David too.

The point is the intention behind it, though the categorisation of said person with the name will be less defined. The stereotype is to pick something religious or royal.

As I said before - I am from Antrim, have lived in Armagh, Belfast, Co. Dublin and Co. Wicklow.

In some areas in the north it gets as ridiculous as

Oisín, Daithí, Iarlaith, Gráinne, Clíodhna and Niamh in the catholic school

and 3 streets away
Charles, George, Frederick, Victoria, Rachel and Jennifer from the proddy school.

Unless you have lived north it’s hard to grasp the level of ridiculousness that persists.

Thanks @harrietm87. I must say I was surprised. I took it as a list names that might be indicative of background as it were, but I think now @Sparklecats included names that are simply common in the Protestant community too.

@Darkherds they are definitely not considered stereotypically Protestant in NI, ignore that comment.

Im as Catholic as they come and my brother has one of the allegedly Protestant names 🤣

@Sparklecats where are you actually from?! Loads of the names on your list are equally Catholic names as Protestant. John ffs!

Oh, didn't realise names as common as John or James or Thomas could be considered sterotypically Protestant in NI.
They're certainly not in ROI, though some names do indicate your background here too, but not in a problematic way generally.

@Darkherds it can work with birthdays too. When I lived in the south there was a guy whose birthday was 12th July…. There was an issue every time he came out.. somebody who knew him would tell the group and then it was a whole thing.

And yes there are stereotypical Protestant names too such as Billy… know a catholic called it and he always gets hassle over it. I don’t know why his mother didn’t shorten it to Liam instead…

Prods you’ll get John, James, Henry, Charles, George, Philip, Richard, Thomas, Simon, Rachel, Rebecca, Eve, Lauren, Elizabeth, Victoria…

Think Royal or biblical to make a point about what you are and what you stand for, rubber stamping again.

But I can’t think of an equivalent name that’s associated with say UDA and unionism, like the way Saoirse would be associated with IRA/republicanism.

@Mooshamoo, you continually bob up on these issues breads with some deeply weird, entrenched ideas about Anglo-Irish relations., which bear no resemblance to the actuality of either country in my long years of living in both.

OP, I can’t speak for NI, but from my position at the other end of the island, it’s a completely ordinary, well-used name which doesn’t stand out from other standards like Sinéad, Siobhán, Niamh, Caoimhe, Gráinne.

Does it work the other way round too?
I mean, I'm from ROI and know a good few people called Billy and it's simply a name...but I imagine calling your child Billy is much more 'loaded' in NI?

Oh I completely agree with you re OP's child growing up in ROI. I was just agreeing with the point that it's not like picking any other Irish name in NI, and wholeheartedly disagreeing with math that picking such politically divisive names in NI is a sign of progress.

As ever when naming a baby, we have to be aware that we won't be the ones living with the name, and so it is good to be aware of potential issues - we may feel we would be comfortable living as Saoirse From Dublin Who Has Moved To Belfast, but it won't be us, it'll be someone else and so we need to weigh it up fully aware that they may have different feelings to us.

A general point, not one specific to OP!

@Sparklecats and @ColleenDonaghy i actually think you’re slightly overstating it but I admit I’d pause before naming a child
who would be born and grow up in NI Saoirse, (probably due to my own hang ups and upbringing more than based on any actual fact) BUT the OP isn’t from NI.

And even if her DD moves there in future she will be Saoirse from Dublin or whatever, not Saoirse from the Falls Road, and the connotations and implications are completely different. It’s a bit mad tbh to tell an Irish person that they shouldn’t call their child an Irish name in case some loyalists might take issue with it in future.

Yeah, it’s not just that you anger unionist bigots, and enthuse republican bigots you also have the issue of triggering people who have suffered trauma on account of republicans or who continue to feel fear in their day to day lives.

It stirs up a hornets nest. And I’m not sure I would want to lumber a child with all of that.

I know a few Sorcha’s who would have been Saoirse but for the connotation. So that could be a good alternative.

When you get beyond border counties it isn’t an issue.

It works both ways though. I'm sure there's many from a unionist background who would worry that a Saoirse wouldn't be particularly welcoming to them.

I don't know that knowingly picking such a politicised name in NI is a sign of progress, much more likely quite the opposite.

I’m from NI and grew up in Belfast during the Troubles. In those days, it was a definite political statement to call your daughter Saoirse and would only ever have been done knowingly by people who had particular sympathies.

But that was like 30 years ago now and the OP’s child is going to grow up in ROI. So whether her name is Saoirse or something else she’s going to be Irish in the eyes of the people who might have taken issue with Saoirse, and her name won’t make a difference to anything.

I think it’s a lovely name. I’m in England though and the number of people who insist it’s sursha thanks to Miss Ronan is infuriating!!

The lack of forward progress is due to lack of political courage, and extreme parochialism. Someone needs to make the first move.

With respect @mathanxiety because I get what you’re saying and it is absolutely the way it should be in an ideal world.

But equally well this is kind of like those extreme traveller people who think the world should be free to roam and want to challenge peoples perceptions about countries. They are all for standing up for their personal freedoms…. and then they wonder why they’ve been held hostage and are in need of emergency support to escape.

Things have come a long way - but the current political situation and unrest is not conducive to relaxing about personal safety.

I loved Saoirse but I agreed with my husband in the end that it wouldn’t have been a safe name to use as we are back quite a lot and our daughter may go to Uni/live in NI for a time. Ie we are all for culture but we didn’t fancy having our daughter a target for assault.

If there was a functioning government, no dissident attacks, removal of peace walls, abolition of the catholic school system in favour of integrated education amongst other things…. then we would have likely felt comfortable, but the atmosphere has been too charged for some time because there is little forward progress.

So use it proudly and challenge the misperception. We do not need to pander and in fact doing so only perpetuates the divisions because it is engaging with the sectarian dynamic.

Irish names are actually very easy to pronounce once you know how the letters combine, Irish spelling is much much much more regular than English.

A few tips to get you started:

aoi = ee (e.g. Aoife = ee-fa)

bh = mh = v (e.g. Siobhán = shuh-vawn, Niamh = neev or nee-uv)

Agree with others - I wasn't aware of any political connotations around the name growing up in Dublin, but now I live in NI I wouldn't use it. (And one of my DDs does have an Irish name and goes to the local Protestant school, so I've no issues with appearing Irish, Catholic or nationalist but I would not want anyone to think I was more extreme than that).

Seer-sha? Glad you´re in Ireland, I wouldn´t have a clue, I would have gone for Soh eer seh. But then the spelling of Irish names is an absolute mystery to me.

Totally agree too, and it’s a lovely sentiment if you are sunning yourself down in Kerry.

Where you have peace walls, dissident attacks, segregated education on the basis of religion and culture… a name like Saoirse will be contentious and labelling.

Imo it won't even be "a lot" when in England. My dd has a Irish name (shock horror we have no Irish connections we just loved the name)

People may ask once or twice but then they get the hang of it and it stops. Dd lived in Denmark for 2 years where the name is unheard off. They just asked. How do you say your name? And got on with it.

Dd is 20 so we have had years of this. People are.more used to non top 10 names these days.