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

A non-rhotic accent is used in parts of Ireland too it seems, particularly in the Louth/Cavan area. Also the Dublin inner city accent was non-rhotic but is now mildly rhotic apparently.

I've read this, but I'm not from any of those areas so haven't observed it personally.

Really? That's interesting. I wonder why.

I only know one person from cavan and he pronounces his r's. I don't think I know anyone from Louth.

Yes I think parts of Lancs pronounce R. Boston is weird. But I suppose the accent was long established before major Irish immigration happened? Most other N American accents are rhotic afaik.

It might be New England too? That part of the east coast anyway. Oh and in the south too, like Texas and Georgia I think they might say things like remembah instead of remember.

Yes, the person I know from Cavan pronounces her r's too, but I suppose certain accents in the region must be non-rhotic or at least have aspects of non-rhoticity.

Names can be pronounced in different ways, equally correctly. The Sorcha I know is spelt like that and pronounced "Sore-sha". I've got a friend called Maya who pronounces it "My-a" and know others who say it "May-a".

Who cares?!

You can pronounce your name how you want really but what one shouldn't do is imply Sorcha is pronounced Sore-sha in Irish as it isn't. Or imply that it's the correct pronunciation in general, rather than the correct pronunciation specifically for your name.
Sore-sha is a common enough pronunciation of Sorcha as it happens, but it's an adaptation of the Irish language name (probably based on a misunderstanding of Irish phontics).
And that's okay as long as it's clear.

What OP was upset about was people assuming an incorrect pronunciation was a correct, Irish one and being very vocal about that.
And saying she was wrong, especially when she wasn't.

@TwirlBar my friend called Sorcha IS Irish. I expect she knows how to pronounce her own name correctly. The other 2 pronunciations are also commonly used.

I mean you get Irish Caitlins these days who pronounce it Kate-lynn (which isn't the Irish pronunciation). I think names get imported to England or America and then fed back to Ireland with the modified (not wrong) pronunciations

Sore-sha is a really common pronunciation of that name and so is of course the correct pronunciation to use when referring to your friend. When referring to the name it could probably be considered a Maya, Naomi, Helena, Caoimhe type situation with multiple pronunciations at this stage.

It's not technically the correct pronunciation of that Irish word though. If you grew up in Ireland you'll be familiar with the word dorcha meaning dark, pronounced roughly durr-uh-ka, with the middle syllable being what MN has told me is a schwa (ie not stressed). The word sorcha is the opposite of dorcha and pronounced in the same way. So a native speaker would never use the sore-sha pronunciation of that name.

(Very much open to correction by native Irish speakers on all that.)

Yes many people in New England say idearr for idea, etc. Less common in the younger generation though

Btw @Elektra1 , I'm not sure if you're posting at cross purposes with OP - her DD is Saoirse not Sorcha. Different names with different meanings and obviously different pronunciations. OP is using the most common pronunciation for her daughter and being corrected by people who are flat wrong.

So OP isn't referring to calling her daughter Maya (my-ah) and being corrected to may-ah. She's calling her daughter Jean and being corrected to Jane.

I'm sure she knows how to say her name too. Sore-sha is correct for her.

What I am saying is that it's not the Irish language pronunciation of the name, it's an adaptation. Which is fine - loads of names are adapted like that. It only matters when someone insists Sore-sha is the way to say the name, or that it's Sore-sha in Irish, or something like that.

Your friend probably wouldn't insist that other Sorchas are completely wrong when they say their name as Surra-cha. That would be an issue and that's what happened to OP.

I'm not sure what other 2 pronunciations you're referring to?

No, she doesn’t. Obviously you address her as however she mispronounces her own name, but the vowel cluster ‘aoi’ simply can’t be pronounced ‘oh’. You might as well say that Bob can be pronounced ‘Philip’.

Is it Caoimhe? I've had a 'Kee-va' and a 'Qu-eeva' (both spelled in my class at the same time, one's dad came from Donegal hence the different pronounciation. My DD answers to either version, but she is Qu-eeva
I'd only ever heard 'Seer-sha until the last 5 years or so, Saoirse Ronans pronunciation I assumed was an East coast dialect/accent thing but her version seems more common now

Sorcha doesn't have an aoi vowel cluster.

Sorry, I got confused because someone up the thread had claimed Sore-sha was a valid pronunciation of Saoirse.

Sore-sha still isn’t possible as a correct pronounciation of Sorcha, though. But obviously you address people as they understand their own names, even if these contravene the phonetics of Irish in any regional dialect, just as I address an Aoibheann I taught as ‘Ayveen’.

@KindOf "
No, she doesn’t. Obviously you address her as however she mispronounces her own name, but the vowel cluster ‘aoi’ simply can’t be pronounced ‘oh’. You might as well say that Bob can be pronounced ‘Philip’"

But "Sorcha" doesn't have the "vowel cluster 'aoi' in it".

Language is not fixed. It is dynamic. Spellings and pronunciations change over time.

You still haven't addressed any of the posts pointing out that sore-sha isn't a valid pronunciation of the Irish word sorcha though.

Btw I'm a big fan of language and pronunciations changing in English, but Irish is much more prescriptive in its spelling. You don't get the bough/cough/though/through type thing in Irish.

Oi Frog! is a children’s rhyming story. The author presents ‘sofa’ and ‘gopher’ as rhyming words. In the rhotic accent (Irish, Scottish) those two words do not rhyme.
no idea about the ladybird one.

Sorcha pronounced as Sor-sha is just WRONG.Its worse than Saoirse pronounced Sor-Sha (which is still wrong).

Its like the Welsh name Sian being pronounced Sy-Anne. You can use it if you want, but it’s going to be a bit laughable to anyone Irish.

@BarbaraHoward "
You still haven't addressed any of the posts pointing out that sore-sha isn't a valid pronunciation of the Irish word sorcha though"

The other day I met someone called Calista, who introduced herself as "Callister". If that's how she pronounces her name, who am I to tell her she's wrong? Why is it "wrong"? It's not!

"Sor-sha" is not an incorrect pronunciation of the name, it is A pronunciation of the name.

Language is not fixed. It is dynamic. Spellings and pronunciations change over time.

Yes, they do.

However, in this case they haven't.

The pronunciation of Sorcha in Irish has not changed recently. It hasn't become Sore-sha. That's a pronunciation that has developed among English speakers. Many Irish names have anglicised pronunciations, it's not uncommon. It doesn't mean the phonetics of the Irish language have changed.

I'd say the fact that I know an Irish person who pronounces her name Sorcha as Sore-sha, and have met others who also do, suggests that Irish pronunciations of the name have evolved - recently or not.

I think the confusion here is that @TwirlBar is using "Irish pronunciation" to refer to pronunciation as per the Irish language and you are using it to refer to pronunciation by Irish people, most of whose first language is English.