Welsh baby names that English family can pronounce easily

My Myfanwy is called Fanw by her friends. (Vanoo is the closest I can get)

How would you pronounce it?

How so? It is my great grandmother's name (she was 100% Welsh) and my second name. Why is it incorrect?

DontyMon
Meant to add it is an ancient and very traditional Welsh name. So who is being "so confident and making so little effort"? 🙄

@GreenCandleWax , For a start LL doesn't sound anything like TH, soft or hard. I can't imagine how you say the rest of it.
Regardless of your pronunciation, it is not an easy name for English-speakers to say.

I've already explained but here it is again:

Gwen-LLEE-ann. LL as in the Welsh letter LL, EE like in Lee.
LL is in this video about 4 minutes in:

@KnickerlessParsons , 'Fanw' is colloquial for female where I'm from, from benywaidd. I'd transcribe it as VAN-oo.
One Myfanwy I know is 'Fanwy' and the other says her name as Miffanway (and insists on it).

@GreenCandleWax It is a very old name but given that you got one of the sounds wrong, you're the one who didn't make any effort.

Imagine if it was a thread called 'English baby names that Welsh family can pronounce easily' and someone posted 'Boudicca, it's pronounced Boujicca' and that's about equivalent. Nain and Taid would probably be thinking it was Boo-JIC-a.

@HudALledrithmy apologies. I know a Welsh lady called Tonwen. Maybe her parents made it up - she told me it means white wave.

It may be in use just fewer than 3 registered every year.
-wen names were very popular in the first third of the 20th century, and there are all sorts of them that never became established names.

Not so, I can think of several names that are pronounced very differently by Welsh speaking South, West and North Walians which doesn't relate to their respective accents. Unfortunately the two that spring to mind are in my immediate family so could be outing!

Not so, I can think of several names that are pronounced very differently by Welsh speaking South, West and North Walians which doesn't relate to their respective accents. Unfortunately the two that spring to mind are in my immediate family so could be outing!

So I am supposed to take instruction from a video made by a north American man about how to pronounce my own second name, one that has been in my Welsh family since at least the 19th century? And his version of ll was not even correct! If I had to describe it again for English speakers, I would say it is pronounced with a soft thl sound. If you don't like that, please take your aggression elsewhere.

Give examples of something similar then, please.

Is it something like Meira in Porthcawl said as Myra not Meira, or Arwel said Ah-wul? (both accent)

It's the stress pattern in that one that's right, the LL is in the other video.
It's definitely not a THL sound, and I'm not the only one who said your pronunciation is wrong.

It’s a completely different tongue position for ll and th……

Agree.

Coming from English parents and being married to an Englishman I know exactly how hard it is to wrap your tongue around the ll sound when you didn’t grow up hearing it, but that doesn’t mean you get to decide it’s a completely different sound.

I can remember trying to teach my cousins Nadolig Llawen and them landing on “slawen” because they couldn’t get the sound to come out out of the sides of their mouth.

You could always go for an English name with a Welsh spelling if you’re worried about pronunciation, like Nansi, Elsi, Har(r)i, Jac.

So what is your answer DontyMon? You were ignorant and offensive yet called me so, even though you don't know what you are talking about? Coming back on here to explain? Or hiding away? Thought so! A bigger person would hold their hands up and apologise.

So the YouTube videos say I don't find it difficult. It isn't difficult, even for non Welsh speakers.😄

That makes no sense.

@sunshinecjw , call the baby Jac or Lili, or if your mother is called Sophie, Noa is gender-neutral.

Can you edit this post so that it makes sense to English speakers?

(I have visions of the scene from Friends where Joey is learning French……..)

I want to know what the "several names that are pronounced very differently by Welsh speaking South, West and North Walians" are, given that the stress is almost always on the penultimate syllable and the language phonetic, I can't think of any other than Siwan (Siwan/Shŵan/Shiwan) or Ieuan said as Yayan (which I'd put down to accent).

I can think of place names and 'English' personal names.

The definition of West Wales and South Wales is pretty loose anyway and South Wales is not historically as Welsh-speaking as North Wales and Mid Wales due to the industrial past.

The pp in question said that "Easy to say, and phonetic in English: Ffion Gweni Betsi Mari Noni Bronwen Anwen Marged Elin Cari", and most of them aren't. Noni and Gweni are barely registering as names (3 and 15 respectively since 1996, 0 between 1996 and 2013).

I pronounce Eira differently to my friend from south wales who says eye- ra. I say ay- ra. Ay to rhyme with hay. That’s the only one I can think of

That's accent not a different pronunciation. Your friend probably says words containing 'ei' with the same sound. I'm thinking more of something like the Spanish Lucia (Luth-ia vs Lus-ia) or Gaeilge Caoimhe (Keeva/Kweeva) type difference

Give over! I have a life apart from mumsnet. You advised someone on pronounciation completely incorrectly- the ll sound is nothing like a soft th, that is an Anglicised version of the sound and is very dissimilar to the actual sound. And if you can't see how it's offensive to cling on to an incorrect version of a culturally significant name in a minoritised language- choosing instead to insist that your version, in the imposed language's pronounciation pattern- then I can't help you I'm afraid.

Gosh you've really got the bit between your teeth 😂😂😂😂

OK, so one other example I can think of is Hywel. Can be pronounced How-ell, or Huw - ell. Absolutely not accent related. The Howell version very much a South Wales pronunciation by both Welsh and English speakers.

And like the poster above who referred to Eira, similarly Aneurin can be pronounced An-eye-rin or An-aye-rin.

Lol, I think most people have a pretty good idea of what constitutes north, south, mid and west Wales - what an odd thing to say.

And yes, all those names are very easy to pronounce for English and non-English speakers alike. The sounds are very similar to those in English and other European languages.

I'm not sure anyone would struggle to pronounce a name like Gweni, Elin, Mari or Cari?!?

And just to add, I know several Gwenis!