Named daughter Saoirse - Seer- sha

[Kira22]

Wrote post earlier but had spelling errors! I put cha instead of sha. Many of you pointed this (quite rightly out) as being different sounds- I'd realised as soon as I wrote it I had got S and C muddled (I am dyslexic) but wasn't in time enough to edit. MNHQ kindly took original post down. Just spent awhile going through it and somehow lost entire original post, DOH!

In short, daughter is called Saoirse - named after the girl in the film Song of the Sea www.imdb.com/title/tt1865505/ We fell in love with the name, we pronounce it Seer-sha - the Irish people in the film also say it this way.

I know the actress, Saoirse Ronan (who I actually don't know at all/never seen her films/just get informed alot about her when I say my daughters name!) pronounces her name SUR-sha. She says herself Seer-sha is also another, very common way. Different accents, regions and all that jazz.

An older couple today were basically telling me I was saying my own daughters name wrong today and that they had Irish in their family and it is Sur- sha. Even when I said yes my dad's side are Irish (not that is blooming matters) they wouldn't have it - the woman even said how are you spelling it so I spelt 'Saoirse' and she said 'when you said her name (Seer-sha) I wouldn't have known her name was Saoirse unless you had spelt it for me because it is pronounced 'Sur-sha'

Am just amazed sometimes people ask her name I say it is 'Seer- sha' and they say 'Ohhh, SUR- sha' with huge emphasis on Sur. When someone tells me their name/ their childs name I make a huge effort to say it how they say it, because, well, that is their name!

I wasn't going to repost but many of you kindly had taken time to write replies before, so felt I should

@Hollyknight
Padder is fairly close though? (where I am anyway).
Peter is the English form, isn't it?

I don’t follow actresses and the only child I know with this name (who is 16) pronounces it Seer-sha. That makes sense, given the spelling. What o would say though, is her mother thought she had chosen a really unusual Irish name (Dad is Irish) but there were three in her class in her Catholic primary school. She was extremely disappointed to find she was part of a trend!

The correction isn't as blatant as that. I've only ever got the correction on the phone when they would need to know my name. It's more:

Me- My name is X
Them - Sorry, what was that?
Me - x
Them - Oh, you mean y.

Interestingly I've only ever been corrected by people from Dublin. My pronunciation is connemara Gaeltacht and the Irish learned in Dublin would rarely be connemara.

I'm American and find Seer-sha much easier to pronounce than Sur-sha...

That couple was just being small-minded, don't pay any attention to them.

Incidentally, on the pronunciation from my Irish great grandmother was Maria, pronounced Mariah (like Mariah Carey) and I know a Sophia who pronounced it Soph-eye-uh. Apparently Soph-ee-uh is a continental pronunciation.

That definitely sounds a bit mad. I assume you didn't get that book in Ireland? People would be returning it as faulty 😁

We have both in Ireland, there's loads of children's books that don't rhyme for us. The Ladybird book is by Julia Donaldson, every house with little kids has at least one What The Ladybird Heard book.

Yeah, traditionally it's like Paddar.

I'm coming up on 60 and it would have only been seen as a possible nod to nationalism. But I'm not in NI so it may be different up there.

I phrased my post poorly. I know Irish citizens can have foreign accents if they grow up elsewhere.

The implication in her posts were that she was giving an Irish pronunciation for the name whereas she was giving an English pronunciation.

OK so I just looked it up on teanglann.ie which has audio recordings of native speakers from the three major regions which have a Gaeltacht : Ulster , Connacht and Munster. Seer-sheh with the emphasis on the first syllable. It is quite a popular name in Scotland too.
A very handy site btw.

We get the books in Ireland but most people get what they mean. We hear enough English accents to know what they're trying to do! I think in the south east England people struggle more with new accents, especially outside of London in quieter areas. I've heard people say "but I don't have an accent at all" when to me they sound like someone off grange hill 😂. In Ireland we are well aware that not everyone sounds like us, so quite different really.

Yes, I think it depends where you live. I'm well over 45, very far south, and it doesn't really have nationalist connotations where I am. That is, people do know the meaning of the name, but you wouldn't assume anyone is a rampant nationalist if they called their daughter Saoirse.

It might have been a nod to nationalism in times gone by as the pp said but nothing major. Tbh, when my cousins in Belfast were being named and someone suggested Patrick Mc.... (our surname is a Mc one), someone said "you might as well sign him up for the IRA right now"! That was in the 80s. So people used to be very weird indeed about appearing "too nationalist" in NI

My kids loved her books. Room on the broom was my favourite. We also had the gruffalo and the grufallo's child.

The ladybird ones must be more recent as I never came across them. My dc are all adults now though.

Yes, it's a great site, and yes the second syllable of Saoirse is sheh and not sha with a strong aah sound...it rhymes with meh, not baa.
(For me anyway, as pp pointed out rhymes depend so much on accent!)

It's the same for Aoife, Caoimhe etc. They don't end with the same sound as Anna or Ciara.

Just to add...I also checked Teanglann for ' saor/ free' . It gives 'seer' , except for Munster which is more like 'sayer' to my ears.

Speaking of 🐞 , slight derail , I loved the Ladybird books in Irish by Mairéad ní Ghráda. Classic children's stories in nice simple Irish.

"I guess I have just become too Anglican 😂"

Well if this was a predominantly Irish site presumably no explanation would be needed to explain that "se" sounds like "sher", to a person with a roughly RP accent. Complaining that it doesn't work phonetically for an Irish accent is a bit silly when she's obviously communicating with people who have a non-rhotic English accent.

<dons hard hat and legs it>

It wasn't clear initially that the poster spoke with an English accent. That only became clear later in the conversation.

I think non-rhotic English people forget that not everyone in the UK is taught about non-rhotic English. Unless it is explained to them, they won't know that the "r" you are adding in is supposed to be silent/used to signal a different sound from the letter before it. "R" just means "arrr" otherwise.

This is not an Irish site, no. But it's also not only an English site.

And anyone in Ireland is most definitely not taught about non-rhotic English.

I'm trying to think are there other English speaking accents that are non- rhotic but I'm drawing a blank. All those other English speaking countries are presumably not taught it either.

Wales might be but I'm not certain. But I know for sure that Scotland and NI aren't taught non-rhotic English. It wasn't until just a few years ago that I realised that when people were writing "barth" they weren't actually saying "barrrth". And that oar, or, our, and awe all sound the same to some people. 🙃

And then there is my friend in Bristol who randomly adds "r" onto the end of worlds AND pronounces them ffs. "I have an idearrr..."

There are actual English people with rhotic accents. The West Country and parts of East Anglia for example. This might explain why , when I was at secondary school in Essex, first years would follow me around doing Long John Silver impressions 😂.

Australian, Kiwi, South African, Boston maybe?

Also some people in parts of the north of England? I think some people in either Lancashire might say their Rs the same as I do (irish)