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.

Agree with LunaticFringe - I have a 'hard to spell' (if you're English) Irish surname - DH has a phonetically spelt surname which is almost an English word. At least people realise that they can't spell my name and ask

[Admittedly it was a little more tricky when we lived in Spain - I generally had to spell my name out at least three times to convince anyone that I really meant it . . .]

Actually, coming to think of it, any of us who speak English have no business saying that anything, at all, should be spelt how it sounds, given that I can't believe that any language in the world has stupider spelling than us.

(And I'm betting though I don't know that Irish spelling is completely phonetic, you just need to know the rules?)

i reckon its rory, spelt the irish way

MaMoTTaT - I have to think about your married name, tbh even when it's in front of me on the pc lol

I have a very normal name and even still people ask how to spell it; there's only two variants as far as I know, yet still I have to sound it out to them!

op your hate my dc names then , none of them are English spelling or otherwise , ds1 and ds2 are italin names as half italian .

Dd name is turkish was named by a very close Turkish friend but we did not use the made up spelling so always have to correct people that inface we spelt it right its the other person did not

then we come to ds 3(5) his name is more known in Ireland than uk infact can say never heard another one yet so far and only one sthat can spell it right is anyone with iish links otherwis ethe murder the spelling.Mind ds cant talk so he cant correct them but Dd does

My in laws have asked me to drop the silent E from the end of my babys name (when he arrives that is) to make it easier to pronounce.

I refuse to dumb down his name because they cant read.

YABU

Lewis - I still have to think about it almost 11yrs after marrying the twat if I have to spell it out to someone.

Took me about 6 months to learn to spell it consistently correct, and then about another year to work out a signature

You'd better hope I find a nice man to marry in the future - as I'm keeping it unless I ever re-marry

Takver, Irish spelling is very regular, once you know the rules. However (especially since it's such a small country) dialects vary hugely from place to place. Try to pronounce Conchubhair and it varies from cruh-HOOR to con-KOOR depending on where you learned to speak it. (It's the Irish for Conor, BTW)

Then again, it's a bit like comparing the way Londoners speak with the way English is spoken in Yorkshire. We all manage to communicate and it enriches the language IMO.

lol MaMo - you wouldn't be the same as Mrs Smith lol lol

well I once was a Dobson...........

so you see why I've kept my married name

i am going to back up the op a little here. I work in a place that requires me to phone parents and speak to them about their little angels on a regular basis - i never meet the kids i just have their names to go on.

Often i have no idea if i am talking about a boy or a girl and sometimes i have no clue how to say the name.
Most parents are ok about it but there are some that get very cross if i say the name wrong.
as far as i'm concerned call your kids what you like, spell it how you like but if i phone up and say it wrong give me a break - i can't learn every language in the world!

Neverargue, have you ever been to Barnsley? You might need to revise that line about ease of communication (I used to live near there, btw, it's a fab dialect BUT having moved just about ten miles from West Yorkshire I was surprised that I struggled to understand some of the things some people said...

YABVU. In my native Wales lots of names are utterly unpronounceable to English people but that's no reason why they shouldn't be used.

Cultural heritage is v important.

But of course, OP (who is obviously Queen Victoria reincarnated) would not understand that!

nancy - that's fine by me if you pronounce my DS's names wrong (although TBH it's only DS2's which isn't quite as it's written) and hell - even my best friend still says my surname wrong and she's known me for years now.

Quite frequently I'll leave my name and number so someone can ring me about something and after I've spelled out the surname to them I always add on "first name is fine"

(Actually, I've never been to Yorkshire. And I think I've only been in London once. I'm basing my comments solely on what I've seen on TV )

YABU - people can call their children what they want. I have come across some non-standard English spellings, which I won't always be able to spell it but I will always try!

I found it odd that at work, I asked someone with an unusual name how she pronounced it, and she said "Well I say it like x but some people say it like y". I said that surely her way was the correct way, since it was her name, but she said she was fed up with trying to get people to pronounce it properly so would answer to anything that was close enough.... I thought that was quite sad.

One of my children is called Louis, which some people try and insist is pronounced Lewis. They seem quite cross when I tell them it's pronounced Loo-ee, like I somehow don't know what my own son is called and say 'but it's written Lewis'. No, it isn't. You just can't read. (16 kings of France can't be wrong?!?)

well I think dd's name MLE is lovely and unique

I can have sympathy with the Kitchen Master problem. I married into a german surname. It frankly sounds ridiculous if you put a typically british name with it. I chose simple, traditional, easy to spell and pronounce, short german first names. The weird and wonderful spellings we have had. 1 of them only has 4 letters and i've seen it spelt with 8 or 9!

ok so my friend is called Angharad and this has been shortened to

1. Angie
2. Harry
3. Ann

She is always asked how it is said and spelt and now she lives in England just tells people its Ann.

But in Wales it is very common and i kind of like the name.

YABVU people can call their children what they like.

I should also put that she stoped shortening it to Angie when some old woman kept calling her Angela and would not belive her that it was Angharad so she had to get her Mum to tell the old woman that her DD name really was Angharad. This happened when she was 8 years old. Its a shame other people have a problem with it

Hmm though mine dc are not English names ds2 is pretty well known itallian name though he does get fed up of having point out no A at end if it as he's a boy not a girl ,dd well once you work put it's not the made up for a song spelling then not to hard

ds1 name Is 2 names but no hyphen second half easy the first well he's stopped correcting people on how they say it but does insist they spell it and people more used to the uk or French spelling

Ds3 lol not a hope on he'll people spelling his

Meg, does your name begin with a K or is there another name that all foreign people can't.get their head round?

Just looked and ds3 name apparentley has not made the top 1000 names at any point in the last 20 years

People will always get it wrong. I have a cousin whose name is Catherine. Over the phone, once, when giving her name for something to be posted to her, she said "It's Catherine, with a "C", EvilTwinsCousin". The package arrived addressed to "Catherine Withersee EvilTwinsCousin".

My surname is the same as our lovely PM People still ask me how to spell it.

My mum is a Jill. At Christmas about half her Christmas cards are addressed to Gill. These are people she has known for years. She is far too polite to correct them - in her opinion it would be rude. I admire her equanimity on this subject. It would drive me mad.

I don't understand why people like the OP always have to make remarks about 'other cultures' - when the Anglo-Saxons can rarely make up their own mind on the 'correct' spelling of names. If you can't make the effort to spell the name of your associate or friend correctly - no matter how it's spelled - then you are not considerate.

As others have said, people assume that the English pronunciation is the only correct one.

What about David-pronounced Da-Vid in French. likewise "w" IS PRONOUNCED "v" IN German
I think it is bizare when others suggest that someone doesn't actually know how to pronounce their own name.