To ask how you would pronounce this name?

[Notss]

Hi all,

Sorry if this is the wrong place:

My little sister is expecting her first child and if it is a girl wants to call her “Sian”.

She sent it to me in a text and I replied “What - like See-Ann?” And she told me I was being daft.

So how would you pronounce such a name?

Os and As...

The RP 'o' is completely different from am Irish O or American O or many Os from different regions of the UK.

'It's my potty and I'll cry if I want to' is a perfectly reasonable blooper if your O is not RP/ Home counties/ Sloane.

Potty and party sound similar in a non rhotic American accent. In a non rhotic English accent, they're quite different. Different vowel sounds and the t is different too. We also shorten the first syllable of potty slightly. It's like the difference between water in American and English accents.

Since this thread is still showing up in my list ...

Where does the "h" in words like "Where" and "Wheel" fit ? Especially as I believe I can hear Dara O'Briain almost pronounce them on "Mock The Week" (let's spin the w h eel of news ....) (I know he's a fluent Gaelic speaker, if that has any bearing ?)

(ducks )

I don't the slight aspiration on the w is peculiar to Gaelic, Irish, Scottish or rhotic speakers - posh English accents include it too.

I don't think the slight blah blah

posh English accents include it too.

Posh ? Or proper ?

Shahhn.

just remembered a lady i worked with called sharon pronounced shayr-ron rhyming with hair-on

choccy, The Rose of Sharon in the Bible was always pronounced Share-ron when I went to church. Is it a traditional Biblical way?

In Hebrew it's pronounced Shar-ON, as in the surname which was adopted as a name by Zionist families in the early 20th century. Apparently it is more common as a male first name in Israel! 😂

DGRossetti

In Scotland, whales =/= Wales, which =/= witch.

Where I come from, WH tends to change further into F.. 😂 Yup, good old Furry Boots City.

I do know that H after any consonant in Gàidhlig/Gaelic changes the sound completely and probably does in Gaeilge/Irish, given that they are both descended from Middle Irish to my knowledge. (I'll hold my hands up here and say that while I did study Scots and its development as well as Linguistics as part of my degree, as well as learning some Gàidhlig later, I have very little knowledge of Irish.) Dara being an Irish speaker may be a red herring.

Where does the "h" in words like "Where" and "Wheel" fit ?

It goes before the W sound in Hiberno English, and speaking Irish makes no difference. It's Hiberno English, and the non 'whine-wine merger' WH sound is prevalent in other English accents too.
Where = 'hwere'
What - 'hwat'
When = 'hwen'
Which = 'hwich'
Who - obv 'hoo' in both cases.

Which/witch and Wales/whales are completely distinct.

Interesting about the WH and F blending.
In some old novels and Punch cartoons where a stage Irishman speaks, the W sound is rendered as 'f'. 'Fwere are you going with dat?'' (The Hiberno-English TH is another favourite of the old stereotypers).
In Irish the F sound is made with the lips, not lower teeth to upper lip as in English. The Irish F is less explosive than the English F and can be mistaken for a W and vice versa. In words starting with a W or WH, the tendency to use the Irish F sound (made with the lips as is the W sound) was something the Punch cartoonists seized upon.

english.stackexchange.com/questions/84177/hwat-hwere-and-hwy
Here's your HW explained in excruciating detail.

In addition to the above,

The English pronunciation also used to be /hw/ rather than just /w/ before the wine–whine merger, which has occurred in most of England, the US, Canada, Australia at some point over the last few centuries, but not Ireland, Scotland and a few places in southern USA. So we all said hw at one point, but now only some people do.

Wikipedia says:

Saying /w/ rather than /hw/ was unacceptable in educated speech until the late 18th century. Nowadays there is not generally any stigma attached to either pronunciation. Some RP speakers may use /hw/ for ⟨wh⟩, a usage widely considered "correct, careful and beautiful", but this is usually a conscious choice rather than a natural part of the speaker's accent.

I'm from the southern US (grew up in Georgia) and I pronounce the "h" in whine.

The southern US is one of the regions where that H is pronounced, along with some parts of Canada, Scotland, Ireland and some English regions.

I just looked at a map of where the wine-whine merger is not a feature of speech in the US. It includes almost all of Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. These are areas of heavy Scottish and Irish immigration, going back several centuries. It's interesting to me that the wine-whine distinction has managed to survive on both sides of the pond.

Seth McFarlane doing "cool hwip"

Here's your HW explained in excruciating detail.

👍

In Scotland, whales =/= Wales, which =/= witch.

Not where I live (In Scotland), We pronounce our H's.

I am from Gaelic heritage so maybe DGRossetti is on to something there...

=/= means "not the same as".

shan if you're Irish, it;s a Welsh name so kind of depends on your accent! I reckon most English people would say SHAN.

BumDisease

Ah right. Ignore my comment then!

I would pronounce it Sharn

One that always baffled me was the name Niamh. I would always pronounce it "Ny-am" until someone corrected me and said it was pronounced "Neeve"

I know, NIKLOU. I couldn't beliamh that was how it was pronounced either