To think that children's names should be spelt roughly how they sound

[cleggy36]

There's a boy in my Cub pack who has a name which sounds like a very common boy's name but which has what I assume is a traditional Gaelic spelling. As a result it is more than twice as long as the more common spelling and has only the first letter in common. There is no possible way that anyone not familiar with the name could get even close to pronouncing it correctly. And it's not one I've ever come across before, such as Niamh, which is also tricksy, but slightly better known.

I just think that as a child life has enough challenges without being lumbered with a name which almost everybody is going to pronounce or spell completely incorrectly just to satisfy the parents cultural identity.

SHAWN. Fuck off, it's SEAN.

REECE - It SHOULD BE RHYS

DERMOT - DON'T GET ME STARTED.

"just to satisfy the parents cultural identity"
And the child of those parents presumably shouldn't have any cultural identity?
Deary me.

edam - I was watching Judge Judy yesterday (it's fine, I'm in rehab) and the defendant's name was Kitchenmaster.

KITCHENMASTER (the plaintiff was Kellogg - I shit you not) anyway, I was explaining to the boys that it was probably an anglicised name of german descent such as Kichenmeister or something; which was either changed by the family themselves during the war when a German name could cause you real problems; or changed by an immigration official in the US on their families arrival to the States as they couldn't spell it/understand it.

This led to a massive conversation, none of which I will bore you with, about the mass immigration from Europe by the jewish communities and was v education for my son's.

See, Judge Judy is great!

*emigration

YABU. My son has a Welsh name. It's spelt exactly as it sounds- in WELSH. Which is a phonetic language, unlike English.

DS's middle name is also Welsh, and has an accent- I have also set him up with explaining to people that his middle name is Not Spelt Correctly Without the Accent (and just because there are no accents in English doesn't mean you can leave it out...). Sigh.

Didn't the Royal Family change their surname from Battenberg to Mountbatten during the war years?

Sorry that was a digression following on from ShirleyGunpowderPlot's comment.

It's awful, but I can't help thinking of the Monty Python sketch where the man says 'My name may be spelt Raymond Luxury-Yacht, but it's pronounced Throat Wobbler Mangrove'.

Obviously Gaelic spelling is a bit different though.

Tray-C is unforgivable though.

I know the right thing to do is to get on my high horse and splutter that the OP is not respecting cultural identity etc etc but actually think she has a point. My MIL (german) was luckily persuaded not to call DH Hans-Jochim (they lived in rural Suffolk for his entire childhood). Surely despite cultural identity issues you need to be abit pragmatic about what you saddle the poor child with? I speak as someone with an unusual surname its unutterably tedious having to spell it every single time I have any dealings with any organsation.

I see the OP has pissed off. Which is just as well as she's pissed off everyone else.

"saddle the poor child with"? FFS

There are not all that many names spelt how they sound really. If we're going for phonetic spelling then we end up with names like:
Jak
I-zak
Pawl
Look
Soh-fay
Roh-Ray
Say-rah
May-ray

It just all gets a bit silly. I have a name that is Scottish, but pretty common across the UK. I can think of a number of celebrities with my name. Despite its popularity, anyone from outside the UK pronounces my name with the I and the R swapped and very few of can get their heads round it, even when the spelling is explained they still pronounce it incorrectly.

On a side note, I would not pronounce Sian as 'sharn'. Firstly, it does not have an R so should be said 'shan', but if a Sian was to explain to me that she wanted me to add an R then I would.

YABU.

I have a son called Siôn. It is the traditional Welsh spelling. If I were Irish I might have called him Seán. It would be pronounced the same.

I have a Welsh name which used to be frequently pronounced incorrectly when I lived in England. I can't say it bothered me that much (or certainly not the first time you explained it to someone!)

"SHAWN. Fuck off, it's SEAN.
REECE - It SHOULD BE RHYS
DERMOT - DON'T GET ME STARTED"

ShirleyGunpowderPlot : I think I love you. As well as a Siôn I also have a Rhys. Can I have your permission to use that quote next time some idiot one spells them wrong?

"On a side note, I would not pronounce Sian as 'sharn'. Firstly, it does not have an R so should be said 'shan', but if a Sian was to explain to me that she wanted me to add an R then I would"

SaorAlba but really Sian should be spelt Siân, with the over the a lengthening the sound so that it is Siaaan. It is the same with the in Siôn. No need for any letter R.

I meant: With the ^ over the a

and the ^ in Siôn

Funnily enough, DD was born in Ireland and I named her a very English name, one of the top 5 this year I think. It was very unusual in deepest Tipperary but firmly middle of the road here. Nobody tried to tell me that I should stick a few fadas in or change the spelling to be more Irish.

YABU-the Irish spelling is the correct one!

It's awful, but I can't help thinking of the Monty Python sketch where the man says 'My name may be spelt Raymond Luxury-Yacht, but it's pronounced Throat Wobbler Mangrove'.

ROFL @ Pottonista

my daughter is phoebe but my mum kept insisting I should spell it feebee or fibi like it sounds.

she still refuses to spell it right 10 years down the line.....

I'm thinking it was the traditional spelling of Rory which set OP off...

SaorAlba - I think you and I have the same name! At least, mine has an I and an R that are always switched by foreigners :)

Shirley love 'fuck off it's Sean'. I always mutter something very similar under my breath when I see Reece (my Dad is Welsh). I can just about cope with Dylan pron. Dillon instead of Dullan (given English people apparently struggle with pronunciation) but NOT spelled Dillon. That's just wrong.

Interesting about Judge Judy. Recently had a conversation with a colleague I know quite well who has what I'd always assumed was a very English surname. Turns out theoretically it should be pronounced completely differently as it's Hungarian - his (Jewish) parents escaped from the Nazis and thought it best to Anglicise the pronunciation during WW2 rather than risk being taken for Nazis themselves.

Oh YABU and you know it.

Although I did ditch Caoimhe as my choice for DD because I couldn't spell it and had no Irish connections to justify using it. She has a nice phonetic Welsh one instead.

btw, re. English people not being very good at their own language - dh has what must have been one of the top 10 English male names of the 70s, right up there with Andy and Steve in popularity. Yet a huge number of people transpose the two middle vowels. It's a name they will have seen thousands of times before, it's only four letters long, it is English yet at least 40% of people struggle.