Should I call my daughter Aoibhín in England?

I hate to break it to you, and I'm not sure how you've reached adulthood before finding out you're not English, and are actually Scottish. Be proud of your heritage, Scotland is a wonderful place:

Scottish
If both parents are Scottish and their child is born and raised in England, the child is typically considered Scottish for nationality purposes. This is because the child's Scottish heritage is recognized, and the UK nationality laws generally favor the nationality of the parent who is a citizen of a country that has not separated from the UK. Therefore, the child may automatically acquire Scottish citizenship if at least one parent is a Scottish citizen.

www.gov.uk

Please don’t bastardise the spelling of a beautiful Irish name to fit in. Or to suit those ignorant people who cannot be bothered to learn or pronounce a name.

Please don’t bastardise your heritage.
I had a very unusual Irish name growing up ( but not so unusual now) I was never bullied or teased but have spent most of the childhood spelling it and it has always been a conversation opener.
My Mum stood firm and did not allow anyone to shorten it and I glad she did. I love my name and it is my heritage.

It's pronounced Kwee-veh.

Lovely name. I would have known 2 Caoimhe's growing up. Then it grew hugely in popularity as a name and my kids now know quite a few.

My parents are Scottish, I was born and raised in England, I’m English, it would feel weird if someone described me as Scottish when I’ve never lived there.

Why are people saying it should be anglicised? if you're going to do that you may as well just give her an actual English name, it would be far less insulting. Nothing annoys me more name wise than say for example, a v where there should be a bh. There's no v in the Irish language and names shouldn't be made up like that, totally ridiculous and giving 'younique'.

It's bizarre the amount of English people on this thread who feel their inability or unwillingness to learn a name should mean every one is called Lucy or Evie or Something- fucking-Mae.

I think the big problem is Aoibhín and Aoibheann are already massively mispronounced in Ireland already, so it all gets worse when you go further a field with such a name.

As others have said, 'aoibh' is pronounced as 'eve' in Irish.

That means Aoibhín is pronounced Eve-een and Aoibheann is pronounced Eve-ing.

If you're looking for the Irish name that's pronounced Ave(as in behave)-een, that's spelled Éibhín.

All lovely names, but variations in pronunciation will mean you could struggle with them, even in Ireland.

@Denimrules , it varies, but Keeva (or Kweeva).

Ghislaine Maxwell has been headline news for years but I still hear many pronunciations of her name.

The child WILL be Irish. Both parents are Irish, so the child WILL be Irish. Same as if they all lived in India, the child would still be Irish as both parents are Irish, the child would not be Indian.

Irish citizenship and passports for children born abroad

i work in an international job and you LEARN people’s names.
Same here but not everyone gets it right. E.g. Eleni. I listened carefully to how she said her name, yet when i referred to El-enny, my monoglot colleague corrected me with Elainy.

Welsh First Minister gets called Ellen Ed a lot. She's Eluned.

Caoimhe is a new one for me. How is that pronounced ?

Aoife and Aoibhín are very close, even if you go for the "Aiveen" pronunciation. If you aren't going to pronounce the Aoi sound correctly, why not go for Aibhín or even Aiveen?

It’s too similar to Aoife.

What about Aideen? Or the Irish spelling I think is something like Eadaoin? (there should be some fadas in there somewhere)

But the child won’t be Irish, the child will be born and grow up in England. Why start their life by giving them a name you know they will have to constantly spell out and teach other people to pronounce when there are plenty of other names, even Irish ones, that are more easily spelled and pronounced in English?

I think that you'll be fine to call her that. It would raise eyebrows in certain areas (e.g. the rural village where I grew up; interestingly it was the likes of Mairead and Aoife that caused a stir, as they were so exotic!), but I imagine that you're more likely to get away with it in a bigger town or city.

As an ex-teacher, I've come across a LOT of names that I had never seen before. Aoibhin is positively mainstream compared to some of them...

I struggle so much with this. Because of course youbshould. But on the other hand, should you make your child’s life difficult for a principle? We chose not to- and I’m glad we didn’t. But our adult child wishes we had. But we made the decision for the child, and she can only think about it as an adult.

Do this, call her Aiveen. Its gorgeous and honours her irish roots but reflects that she will also have english roots and does not condemn her to a childhood of planning to change her name by deed poll when she is 18.

Dsis has an irish name that is not pronounced like it is spelled (not seen it on this thread yet) and she has always hated it because of this. If i mention her name to english people they mostly screw up their face and say “what? how do spell that?”. It must be so tiresome dealing with it day in day out. She lasted a couple of yrs living in england after uni and fled back to ireland (where even there they cant get it right).

It is a big deal when it's your name.

It’s properly pronounced Eve-een in every Irish dialect, but widely mispronounced even in Ireland. I think of Ayveen as an anglicised pronunciation myself as it makes no sense in Irish.
Aoibh is pronounced Eve and ín is een.

It’s too close to Aoife when pronounced properly.

https://www.teanglann.ie/en/fuaim/aoibh

MN cannot handle anything that’s not anglicised
drives me mad! People will learn her name
i work in an international job and you LEARN people’s names.
MN posters live in a weird little English bubble like they’ve never been out of their village

It is phonetic.

It'll be fine up to her starting high school as you can tell nursery/teacher her name once and they'll know how to pronounce and spell it. Same with family and friends. All fine in your little bubble.

It's high school where it will start to piss her off. She'll have over 10 different teachers who will each be teaching multiple classes of 30 children. Most of them won't remember how to say or spell it and she'll get fed up of correcting them.

Same goes for adulthood when she's on the phone to a call centre or sitting in the GP waiting room. Or on a Teams meeting at work with people she hasn't met before.

I think it's a lovely name but perhaps as a middle name or spelt phonetically. Could you have an easier to spell Irish first name?

Location is irrelevant. It's spelt phonetically just not in a language that you speak.

And yes, having a name in a different language can be difficult but that's a different point.

😂My child has an usual welsh spelling of a name that is common. Tbh these days there is all sorts of spellings and names from around the globe in London, so I would go with what you want.
Yes they will have a lifetime of phonetically spelling their name and noone will know how yo pronunce it or spell it. But that same goes with half the kids in my childs class. The current year 2 class theybare in its like someone tpped out the scrabble box and they landed into a bunch of names. My child included 😂i think names will only get more ecclectic and unusual, so they wont be alone with their struggles!

Irish names are so hard in England. I have a friend with a Niamh, which I think is pretty well known but she is often asked why she didn't spell it properly!
Don't get me going with Aoife or Caoimhe. Even Sinead and Siobhan are tricky 😪

Also, don’t forget it will never get typed with the accent and diacritics aren’t allowed on UK official documentation (learnt that last week from Mumsnet https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/baby_names/5380324-names-spelled-with-diacritics)