Names spelled with diacritics

But that’s a company, not a name.

Well, no. Any more than all the speakers of other languages that use diacritics don’t care about how the names are recorded.

If Jesus wept, he didn’t weep about fadas.

I think you’re pushing something that’s got nothing to do with alphabets and the form of names in records. As is mathanxiety, it seems.

I was really asking about this post, of people putting a Y on the end.
I've heard it pronounced "Zo" without an accent.
With a Y and accent does it make it "Zo-ee"/ "Zoey"?
I did YouTube pronunciations with the umlaut, and everyone said Zoey, except for an Australian news reader that pronounced it "Zo-Way".

I have a short, semi different spelling for my name, so glad I don't have to deal with accents on top People normally lengthen my name because it sounds shortened already, so seems over familiar when we first meet 😂

Agree.

Omitting the fada is anglicising the spelling. You might as well use a completely anglicised "Shawn' or 'Shaun' if you're going to mangle it like that.

As I noted upthread, 'Sean' is pronounced 'shan'.

Jesus wept.

You genuinely can’t understand that people with Welsh names that include diacritics might reasonably expect the UK Government to accommodate that?

This is relevant to OP’s question because it makes the question a reasonable one.

The question would be less reasonable if English, which has no diacritics, was the only official language of the UK.

Because then you would be arguing that the UK had a duty to accommodate foreign languages.

I don’t know anyone called Chloë or Zoë but that’s how I would expect to write their names.

It’s also important to remember that when talking about Scots Gaelic the word is pronounced “Ga -lick”, kind of like garlic without the r (cos don’t forget that Scots roll the r in garlic 😀), not Gay-lick.

NB that is the pronunciation in English, I could not be 100% sure it sounds the same in Gaelic (Gàidhlig)

Chloë is much more common.

But diacritics are not used for Chloe in English. Why is it important to you to have them?

That's a fair point. I was very English centric and it's that's not a valid approach in the UK.

Old English is not our language any more and hasn't been for centuries. But others have made valid points about Welsh etc. so my post should be ignored.

Gaeilge is the standard spelling now but native Ulster Irish speakers probably say Gaelic.

Also, I’d sometimes use the term Irish Gaelic when speaking to people outside Ireland. It can be more easily understood than ‘Irish’, which people often don’t realise refers to the language as well as the people/culture. Gaelic on it’s own - unless it’s absolutely clear from context - mostly refers to Scottish Gaelic. Irish is what the language is called in Ireland when speaking in English, where I am anyway.

Ooh I'll not be getting into any Ulster/Munster/Connacht debates!

Suffice to say I find language, dialects, regional accents fascinating.
I'm in Belfast and the accent can change not just between N/S/E/W but from one end of a road to another.

Anyway, sorry for the derail, OP!

That wasn’t my point… but ok. My point is that name can be spelt how you prefer. I’m not claiming to speak Gaelic. I’m pretty sure I know Irish people they call it Gaelic, but maybe ive misunderstood.

@GloriaMonday
Chloé is the French spelling but they pronounce it more Clo-ay than ee.

I agree, it is not only strange but shameful that the native British languages, all of which use accents, are disregarded by computer systems used in the UK.

Welsh uses a circumflex, Irish uses acute accents and Scottish Gaelic uses grave accents. Even English, until the start of the computer age, used diæreses to indicate that two vowels were to be pronounced separately, so words like cooperate and Noel were often spelt coöperate and Noël. It also used to use a grave accent, mainly on words ending in 'ed' to indicate that the 'e' should be sounded, e.g. dogged versus doggèd or blessed versus blessèd. You see it a lot in old print, especially hymnbooks.

But computers seems to have put an end to that, and although births can be registered with the correct diacritics (or even the wrong ones!), nobody else seems to think it matters. Perhaps it's not so important for English when most words are known anyway, but for the Celtic languages I'd say it's essential that they are correctly used.

To answer your question OP, I have no idea about the right to have one's name correctly accented, especially when the spelling is otherwise correct. But I'm not sure whether you'd get anywhere by demanding it, if the software isn't programmed to recognised accents. You could try a campaign or petition to have it debated in parliament - I for one would sign it.

@MrsTerryPratchett ,Chloé | The Perfume Shop

I’d say that spelling is definitely more common. I’ve never seen the é spelling.

What Ireland does is neither here nor there.

What Ireland does regarding passports is interesting though. The Irish language accent, the fada, can be included in a person’s name in the the main body of the passport. (The text is also written in Irish as well as in English.)

The accent is omitted from the machine-readable 2 lines of text however.

A compromise it seems, though I’m not sure the practice extends to accents from other languages. Irish and English are Ireland’s official languages.

our eldest is called Zoe and we were talking about people pronouncing names and she says everyone knows how to pronounce her name even without the accent over the e.

we have family and friends all over the world and it’s always been pronounced correctly. The accent in my opinion isn’t needed.

@LadyMonicaBaddingham ,the spelling is usually Zoë.

Our of my best friends growing up was a Zöe. It's the reason I still know the code (ALT 148) to produce that letter on the computer. It isn't hard to make the effort if you want to.

Came here to say this.

My name has a circumflex and it’s on my birth certificate but no other official documents.

I use it at work in my signature but obviously not my email address. Most of my family use it and some of my friends. There’s times when I can’t really be bothered to add it in myself.

On the one hand it’s a right PITA but at the end of the day it is how you spell my name correctly.

@SilenceOfTheTimTams
Many organisations operate UK wide not specifically in England.
Though OP is interested in what happens in England, it doesn’t follow that all UK organisations will consider only the English language when they are setting up their systems.

I’d happily admit obtuseness if I can understand what you’re on about.

I repeated the OP’s question and answered it. How does the fact of and character of the Welsh or Irish languages affect that?

If the UK government (and loads of companies) doesn’t mandate diacritics so what?