Niamh?

there are now so many names that aren't 'said' like they're 'spelled' that you shouldn't need to anglicise it unless you want to. it's a lovely name and i would use it myself - although even being from and living in ireland, for personal reasons i would spell it Neve and enjoy it...how many times do we see names that are all spelled different ways and are the same name? Alastair, Alistair, Alasdair, Alasdhair...

but as one with a very irish difficult to spell and say name, remember she will probably have to correct people all her life (sometimes this gets a bit tiresome).

I love the name Naimh but our surname is O'Brien so her initials would be NOB. Does anyone think this makes the name a no no????? When I was pregnant with my son I kept telling my husband we couldn't do it to our child to give them the initials NOB but the more I think about the name the more I love it. I know you don't have to write down your initials often and we could always put her initials as NO rather than NOB. I also liked the name Ryan but Ryan O'Brien rhymes too much so we settled on Callum which I also love.

I think that changing the original spelling of any name is such a shame (regardless of origin). The English language is full of words that are not spelt as they are pronounced and it seems like quite an American phenomenon to change the spelling for ease of pronunciation. Absolutely no offence is meant by my last comment I only feel this way because I?m so proud of my irish heritage that it seems a pity to dilute it.

xxx

I know 3. 1 uses Niamh (her Dad is Irish), the other 2 use Neve. As Niamh is quite popular most English people know how to pronounce and I think it is much nicer to use the native spelling than an anglicized form.

My experience was the same as mynameisniamh's. It is good to have a distinctive name: my name isn't Niamh, but my clue line used to be 'like the one from Bananarama' which worked reasonably well in the late 80's and early 90s.

When I first moved to Ireland, I stuck to my habit of introducing myself over the phone just by my first name and sounded like a v. self-important twit as lots of women my age share my name here.

I'd stick to the Irish spelling myself. A little bit of spelling out loud is a small price to pay for being different as niamhyy says.

We have a short (irish) surname Idreamofbeanie, and my DD1 is Maebh, which works because of the long vowel perhaps ... She was known as 'bean' before she was born too. Her name has a number of variant spellings in Irish, and as we were living in England when she was born we went for the one which had the biggest clue at the beginning.

Caoimhe and Aoife are lovely names too.

When

I joined this thing solely to comment on this thread!
I'm only 17 and I used to really hate my name at first but now I love it, it's nice to be different and I think changing the spelling is pretty ridiculous, it ruins the effect of the name.
As for teachers saying it wrong etc, you get used to it and it's generally funny to be called nymph! haha.

My younger sister's named Roisin and she always has it much worse than me with pronunciation anyway.

My little boy goes to school with a Nieve, and i am so glad they spelt it that was or else i would never remember how to spell it!

They are teaching kids to read phonetically these days, Niamh would get very confused... I am going to have to change my DS from Isaac to 'ie s a k'

I love the name Niamh - it would be my first choice for a girls name except that DPs surname is Smith and I'm really not sure the 2 names work together. It sounds a bit abrupt having 2 short names like that (am I right?). I'm adding my vote to the 'Niamh' spelling too, I really dislike seeing it as Neeve for some reason.

My niece is called niamh and i love it, not many about and really pretty, no name teasing to come from it!!! her middle name is kate seems to go well.

It's a pretty name

Please spell it Niamh if you are going to use it.

Don't see how the shortening to Evie works.

My only concern would be that it's very popular around these parts but might not be where you are.

I love it (spelled Niamh) - it's our top choice for our LO due in May.

DD1 has been calling my bump Nemo (after the fish) ever since she saw the first scan pic so we will probably stick with that as a nickname!

I like Niamh. I don't think it's half as pretty when it's anglicised to Neve/Neave etc, though.

I absolutely love Aoife, Caoimhe and Saoirse, too, and considered all of them at one time or another. My background is Irish, but DH isn't and thought they were all weird

BTW, Aoife is pronounced "ee-fa" and Caoimhe is pronounced "quee-va". Hope this helps!

I am Irish but married to an English boy and for the sake of the in-laws and their inability to learn to spell or pronounce Irish names (or is that unwillingness to integrate a little Irishness into their family...), I've been compromised by DH into giving my DC 'English' names when I would have loved to have given them 'Irish' names .

One of my bestest fwends is called Niamh - she's fabtastic so therefore I think you should go for it!

I don't recall my childhood, but I've loved having a unique name in a country where it's still quite uncommon. As an adult, I really cherish such a beautiful name and always get complimented. Plus it lends itself to the nickname Neevie, which I've always been fond of.

I don't see how it can be pretentious. I'm not Irish so I wouldn't use it. But if I were, I'd spell it Niamh.

I'm not Irish and nobody has ever asked me about an Irish connection. It's not pretentious imo.

An Irish girl i know's dd's are Kirsty and Rebbecca? Are they Irish names?

If you are not Irish then do not bother as people will always ask about an Irish connection and it sounds silly if you have none as it is such a distinctively cultural name imo. It would be very odd to ahve 3 sisters called Aisling, Aine and Niamh for example and for there to be no Irish connection.

Most people i speak to know how to say Niamh and a lot know how to spell it. I call dd Neev tho not Nee-uv.

Well I don't live in Ireland but I am Irish so I would insist on the Irish spelling I am afraid - this a a very multicultural country and I think it would be a great loss for people from all over the world to have to change the spellings of their names just to make them phonetic in English

Well, if it were me, I'd spell it Neeve (which sounds pretty enough to me). Because it makes sense for English speakers to spell it that way if that's how it's said.
I'd spell it Niamh only if I actually lived in Ireland.

Niamh is definitely more common now - more than other Irish names such as Aoife & Caoimhe around here.

Ime, children generally don't have any difficulty pronouncing "unusual" names - they tend to just pick up the correct sounds and don't have preconceived ideas about how names should sound. In our school there is a Caoimhe... there are two different ways to pronounce this - I grew up with the other version and the kids at school always correct me if I say it that way!

I dont think so, I think its common enough now that most people know what it is.

She will spend a good chunk of her life reply to the question 'Can you spell that for me, please?'

HOw do you pronounce Aoife and Caiomh (have I got the spelling right?