How would you spell Cara?

@AuntDympna Sorry, just getting back to this now.
Re the spelling of the name as Cára — using the fada does make sense now based on Dineen’s observation of a Donegal spelling of the word friend as cára. I’d never seen it spelt like that before (maybe because it rarely is now since the CO?) And I’d never heard the word for friend pronounced the same as the name either, the speakers of Ulster Irish I know say corra. But it obviously is or at least was and I really don’t know that many speakers of Ulster Irish anyway.

So the spelling of the name as Cára was meaningless to me before I knew all that, ie it made sense phonetically in Ulster, but it didn’t mean friend, it didn’t mean anything at all iyswim. So thank you for that extra information.

Mind you, I still think the name an introduced one, which happens to have a happy double meaning,

Addressing the second part of your post,
and again just looking at Ulster, sár and pár are different to nár, but the first two rhyme. Lár can be similar but it depends on the speaker (eg lár vs lár páirce).
Clár sometimes rhymes with sclár (clár oibre) and sometimes with sár (clár bia) all depending on speaker and subdialect I suppose?

I may have officially gone mad now and it’s quite possible I have mixed all those up (but I think I no longer care) 😂

Just Cara or Kara.

Late to the party, but as a PP has thrown in Cara as a Welsh name in addition to Irish and Italian, I'm going to add Scottish to the confusion!

In Scotland it's an island name (you know how we love those - Iona, Vaila, Ailsa, etc). Derived from Scottish Gaelic "caraig" meaning friend or dear one, it's spelt with a 'strac' on the first 'a' in Gaelic, i.e. Càra, and without an accent in Scots, i.e. Cara. Historically spelt Caray in Scots before the modern form came about, and was first used a personal name in 1798.

Hope that helps, if you haven't lost the will to live, OP!

@Lastmoon If you think you hear the pronunciation of the name Cara in the Ulster soundfile for cár on Teanglann, that's great. The point is spelling the name as Cára is not wrong - that's all.

If you're still interested in what I'm hearing, you could listen to nár (exactly what I was expecting to hear based on the spelling), sclár, sár, lár, and I'd love to know what you make of pár.

@AuntDympna I should add, I’m referring to the teanglann sound clips. I’m not ruling out the fact that other speakers in Ulster may pronounce the words a bit differently (like the example you had of Dineen giving cára for cara in parts of Donegal). So I’m referring to the teanglann pronunciations specifically.

What I said upthread was that the vowel sound in Cá and Cár is the same in Ulster Irish, the vowel sound in those words doesn’t differ in the sound clips…and you seem to disagree. That’s the bit I don’t get (well one of them) and why I think we might be hearing things differently.

Obviously there’s an r sound in Cár too. I don’t think it’s slender, cár would sound more like the English word care if it was said with a slender r in Ulster. And it’s spelt with a broad r (though I know pronunciation doesn’t necessarily match spelling since the CO).

I don’t think ‘the á is dragged forward and up a bit’ by the Ulster speaker. I don’t hear that. The vowel sounds the same to me as it does in Cá.

Add an a to the end of (Ulster) Cár, or a ra to the end of (Ulster) Cá, and that’s the way I say the name Cara.

Fully overthought now!
This is what's happening with cár in teanglann:
The á is an open vowel which in Munster is said at the back of the throat, in Connacht at the middle. In both samples the r is broad, as written, right down in the back of the throat.
In the Donegal sample, it sounds to me the reader is saying cáir - he's put a very slender r on the end, trilling the tip of the tongue just behind the teeth, which drags the á further forward and up a bit. This contrasts with same speaker saying cá.
This is typical for Ulster Irish, as described below in this quote from a Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulster_Irish
Quoted text below:
/aː/ is more fronted in Ulster than Connacht and Munster (where it is [ɑː]), as [aː] or even [æː~ɛ̞ː] preceding slender consonants.

That’s very interesting. I’d love to have done Irish in uni actually, but went in a completely different direction. I did wonder if you had a non-rhotic accent when you spoke English and if that meant you hear Cá and Cár a bit differently than I do. Maybe? We do seem to have different opinions on the sound files.
Possibly overthinking for sure (I have form)😅

@Lastmoon @mathanxiety
This is the funniest baby names thread ever. We may be overthinking this.

I grew up in England, spent four years in Belfast at university where I studied Irish including all the old forms of the language and the modern dialects. Spent a lot of time trying to copy native speakers. Had to come back to England for work. These days I mostly speak RP English.

Cara is a Welsh name, no accents needed

The only explanation I can come up with is that we are simply hearing the sound files differently. That happens I know, but it generally depends on the sounds a person was brought up hearing.

@AuntDympna
You say you speak Irish with a Donegal/Belfast accent. Do you speak English with that accent too? Because you are saying things sound the same that, well, they just don’t, to my ear anyway. And I’m not sure if it’s because I’m not hearing things ‘properly’, or you’re not.

It is all very confusing 😅
I suspect you weren’t brought up in Ireland @AuntDympna, but maybe that’s my own ego speaking? Maybe I’m getting it wrong when I listen to the sound files? I’m not a native speaker.

I'll join you on the bewildered bench, @Lastmoon

The Ulster teanglann file for cá sounds very different to the one for cár to me!

The Irish fellow saying car on Forvo sounds like how I say the Irish word cara. My Irish is mostly Donegal heavily influenced by BT11 rather than D4.

Someone from Belfast or Rannafast will be along in a minute to correct me, no doubt.

@AuntDympna
Just to add, if you scroll down to the man from Ireland saying the English word car in this link, well, that’s very close to the first part of the name Cara in my accent. Not sure if it matches how you say the name or not.

forvo.com/word/car/

I’m a bit confused too @AuntDympna.

At first I thought it was just because you must pronounce the name Cara differently to me, with a different accent (English, D4 maybe?) because you said

‘I was just playing around with the soundfiles on Teanglann. Here's cara…
These sound close enough to the name Cara to me’

and these pronunciations for the word for friend in Irish don’t match the way I say the name Cara at all.

You also said

‘Now here's the word cár, which means "where" in the past…
The Munster example sounds very close to the name Cara to me. The Leinster sounds more like Cora’

To me, the Munster pronunciation does not sound anything like the way I say the name Cara, or the Leinster like Cora.
So again I thought that we must just be pronouncing the name differently.

But then you say

‘Now here's the word cá…
The Ulster version is how I often actually say the ca in "cara"

And that does sound the same as the first syllable of the name Cara to me.
And isn’t the vowel sound in Cá and Cár the same?
Basically, I can see why you’re saying what you do for Cá, but I’m totally confused why you say Munster, not Ulster, matches for Cár? And that the pronunciations for cara on Teanglann sound like the name too.

Love accents but bit bewildered now tbh😅

I'm puzzled now.
If I'm being honest, I would say I pronounce the word "cara" the same way I say the name. I didn't write that before because I was afraid someone would tell me I'm wrong and I'm mangling the language.

I was just playing around with the soundfiles on Teanglann. Here's cara:
https://www.teanglann.ie/en/fuaim/cara
These sound close enough to the name Cara to me.

Now here's the word cár, which means "where" in the past eg "Cár fhág tú é?" where did you leave it?") You have to copy-paste the link.
https://www.teanglann.ie/en/fuaim/cár
The Munster example sounds very close to the name Cara to me. The Leinster sounds more like Cora.

Now here's the word cá. (Cá means "where" now, eg "Cá bhfuil sé?" - "where is it?" ) You have to copy-paste the link.
https://www.teanglann.ie/en/fuaim/cá
The Ulster version is how I often actually say the ca in "cara", and if you've learnt the Leinster or Munster pronunciation you might now understand why those of us who speak the Ulster dialect have trouble deciding whether "cara" needs a fada. You say a different sound: we say the same sound for longer.

I'm pretty certain now the name Cara came into Ireland from Italian or whatever were fashionable names. (Thanks LastMoon), but was then recognised as the ordinary, everyday word for "friend". As lots of people have said, I don't think it needs a fada, but in Southern dialects Cára can equally be said with the á like in the Munster sample of Cár.

Thank you for reading all the way to the end. Sorry for long post.

Did Irish in university after many summers in the Gaeltacht.

That’s really interesting @AuntDympna, I hadn’t realised that, hadn’t ever heard that version from a Donegal speaker. Not sure if the spelling would be in regular use any more after the Caighdean though?
Although that doesn’t stop people either which is great.

As far as the name goes though, I still think that the pronunciation we use today is much more likely to be an introduced one, rather than coming from a subset of Donegal speakers. In my opinion that’s a happy coincidence.

It’s not a name with a really long history, like Eithne or Sadhbh. It’s a more recent addition as a name, maybe a couple of centuries? Definitely in use in Ireland by mid-1850s, but on a very, very small scale at least as a stand alone. The 1911 census shows 5 people with Cara as a first or second name and 5 with Kara. None from Donegal. The majority (7) were Church of Ireland or England or Presbyterian too, which to me indicates it’s more likely to be an introduced name rather than one originating from native Irish speakers. I know some Irish Protestants were interested in the language at this time but, on the balance of probabilities, I just don’t think the pronunciation of the name Cara as used in Ireland today was derived from Irish, even if it does happen to match a certain Donegal pronunciation.
I could be wrong obviously 😁

Yes, and it’s pronounced a bit differently again, to rhyme with Darragh. It’s lovely.

Dinneen's dictionary from 1904 has this listing for the functional word "cara"

"cara, g. carad, d. caraid, npl. caraid, cáirde, gpl. carad, m. and f., a friend, a beloved one, a relative, a term of endearment; nom. cára (Don.); nom. also caraid."

What that says there is that the alternative spelling "cára" was in use in "Don." which means Donegal. In Donegal that spelling would be pronounced like the way the name Cara is usually said. In other words, that pronunciation is legitimate, and so is the spelling, for the functional word.

https://www.logainm.ie/ga/s?txt=caragh&str=on

This website lists Irish language placenames with the English ones.
The placename "Caragh" seems to be an Anglicisation of the Irish name "Carthaí", which is the name Carthach.

https://www.coillte.ie/site/caragh-lake/. Just wanted to add this...

@Sunnyevenings Yes, the name is pronounced like that. It uses the Italian pronunciation. No disagreement there.

The word cara (meaning friend) isn’t pronounced the same as the name. So when someone is talking about their friend in the Irish language they pronounce the word corra, more or less.

I feel like we’re going around in circles here 😁
I am writing the name with a capital C, and the Irish word with a small c to distinguish them if that helps make it clearer.

But cara (friend) is said as corra in all dialects as far as I know, so it isn’t that tricky.

Except as I and many others have already said on this thread, this isn’t actually the case and the name Cara IS pronounced by many (II’d go as far as to say the majority) as Car Rah.

All the native dialects are equally correct. Usually the advice is don’t mix them. It is hard for learners, I know that.
But cara (friend) is said as corra in all dialects as far as I know, so it isn’t that tricky.