to pronounce the name ‘Ciarán’?

[Mummy2Sienna]

I’ve heard ‘KEER-on’ all day on Radio 4, and just now ‘’Keer-ON’. (It’s the Irish spelling of ‘Kieren’ and pronounced as such).

Don’t the BBC have people to teach them how to pronounce names? I can think of a couple of famous Ciaráns. It’s not THAT unusual a name!!

@FallingAutumnLeaf all words have one syllable emphasised (or “stressed”) more than the others. Easy to demonstrate when we are talking out loud, but less so in typing, so we tend to use capital letters to show that important syllable.
e.g
LIVerpool
UNder
inVISible

if you try and pronounce those differently as a native English speaker they will feel/sound wrong:

livERpool
unDER
invisIBle

that said, i unconsciously tend to ignore any difference in an end syllable -on -en -an, they all become an all-purpose -n sound. I only realise this when i see people on MN get het up about others choosing the wrong one.

It's driven me insane. It's so lazy.

I wouldn't expect anyone who isn't Irish to know how it's pronounced without hearing it in the media. The BBC and others wang on about their pronunciation departments.

It's not beyond the realms of any capability to learn that Ciarán is pronounced "Keer-awn".

Im Irish, I pronounce Ciaran as keer-ain. Ciaron would be keer-on

Yes, awn as in awning.

I'm intrigued by those saying they pronounce awn and on the same. Do you say 'yon' for 'yawn'? I yoned.

Who cares, no one, it’s a storm name that will never be heard off again like all the others

Well this is interesting. I was assuming the last part was pronounced ran, not awn, un or even on but the newsreaders didn't seem to be using the same pronunciation as each other so I was none the wiser.

Kier-ran.

(The one without the fada i would pronounce ren).

Well you'd hate me. I'm horrific at pronouncing names. I've never seen it spelt that way. I read/pronouced it as 'Chia-ran'

Let's wait until we have a Storm Gearóidín. Then we'll talk...

I'm intrigued by those saying they pronounce awn and on the same.

I pronounce them essentially the same, a common feature of a Southern US accent.

It's often difficult to indicate pronunciation on MN because there are so many different accents represented. It gets especially confusing with rhotic and non-rhotic accents. It took me a while to figure out that the "Farmer's Llamas" is meant to rhyme.

😂
im nominating that for the next round of names.

Keer-awn!

Kieran and Ciarán are not pronounced the same... Or at least they aren't supposed to be pronounced the same.

The emphasis.

KIER-un stresses the first syllable. Most common pronunciation in England IME.

Kie-RAWN stresses the second. According to this thread, most common pronunciation in Ireland.

I'm from Belfast

Keer-an for me

My local BBC station today were talking about the pronunciation and apparently it came from the Met Office as the "official" pronunciation.

Apologies to all the Irish folk here having to put up with us English saying Keer-on instead of Keer-awn! At least I've learnt something, though.

Kier awn

The problem with these kinds of threads is that often even people who pronounce a word the same way as each other will choose different combinations of letters when trying to represent that sound phonetically. You need the phonetic alphabet to do it properly, because 'un', 'on' and 'an', for example, sound different in different words and in different accents!

Kie-RAWN stresses the second. According to this thread, most common pronunciation in Ireland.

That's not what I understand from the Irish posters. I thought it was more that the syllables are stressed fairly equally so that the "aw" sound is heard as opposed to the second syllable being a schwa sound.

Ciarán is pronounced Kerr-awn. The fada on the second a, gives it the aw sound.
Keer-on is more like the English version Kieran

@HappyHealthy23 I'm intrigued by those saying they pronounce awn and on the same. Do you say 'yon' for 'yawn'? I yoned.

NI accent. On and awn are the exact same for me. Literally can’t imagine how someone would pronounce them differently.

@Mummy2Sienna - listening to radio 2 this morning, Zoe Ball commented on their newsreader’s pronunciation and the news lady said she’d been practicing and had been instructed by the pronunciation department how to say it- she was saying Keir-Ron. Harder on the Ron bit. but she didn’t sound comfortable/natural each time she said it!

Your brother's name is Kieran tho, is it, not Ciarán?

I am also annoyed that it's not Storm Chiaráin!!

They're two different names tho. One is Kieran and one Ciarán.

You're not wrong and your description of it being pronounced as though it's a Spanish name is exactly right. It's been driving me crackers. We have Irish family, including more than one Ciaran (can't do the fada, sorry) and I ended up researching how it should be pronounced because I thought I'd been getting it wrong for years.

They don't have a pronunciation unit anymore I believe, certainly not a separate, dedicated function. I know someone who used to work in it.