Dear dreh, Dear dreh, Dear dreh

[Toomanythalias]

Following on from the Call the Midwife thread. Jeeze it's not difficult to pronounce Deirdre correctly, but so many English people continue to insult our beautiful old Irish name with that ghastly Coronation Street pronunciation. It's Dear dreh, folks, not DEEER DREEE.

But that's partly it. Irish people in England find themselves being called Deer dree when that isn't actually their name. Then people assume that's how the name is pronounced because ' I know someone from Dublin and that's how we always pronounced her name'. It's an arrogant lack of effort in a lot of cases

If I hadn't read this thread I would have called an Irish Deirdre Deer Dree because I couldn't possibly have known it was pronounced differently. That's not a lack of effort or arrogant, we can't possibly know how all names originating from different countries/languages are pronounced. If I was corrected and still persisted, that would be arrogant.

I once worked with a person called Sadhbh and asked at the start of the conversation how she pronounced her name as I had no idea

This is most interesting. I has no idea Deidre was an Irish name and pronounced differently.

Other than the Coronation Street version of Deer-Dree the only other one I've heard before was a Deirdre in Desperate Housewives and that was pronounced "Dee-Drah". A bit closer to the Irish sound but still not quite right!

I'm Irish but born abroad .My mom was going to call me Deirdre (pronounced Dare druh) and seeing this thread I am so glad she didn't . I have hardly lived in Ireland in my lifetime and now have a german surname that nobody can pronounce (with an umlaut).One of my best friends in Ireland is a Deirdre (pronounced Deer druh )but we call her Dee.It is a totally normal name in Ireland though.

You better tell them according to @Chickenkeev that they're pronouncing it wrong

Will ya get up the yard ffs!

People should certainly an effort to pronounce your name properly if they're saying it wrong and you correct them.

I think it's just the case that many names are adapted to fit into other languages though so it's not on for you to imply that an English woman who uses the anglicised version is saying her own name wrong.

I'm sure there are lots of non-Irish names that Irish people don't say 'properly' but use nonetheless.

We're an international family and it was a challenge to find our kids names that we liked and would work nicely enough in both languages.

Well I actually love going to different countries and hearing other pronunciations of my name - they always sound much more romantic than my very ordinary English pronunciation. Think 'Olivia' being pronounced Ol-eev-ia. If I lived in those countries I would expect my name to be pronounced the latter way.

Unfortunately it does happen that parents mispronounce a name, and hand that mispronunciation onto the child — usually when the child is growing up in another culture/language, but not always. The Irish name Cáitlín (Koyt-leen or Koytch-leen) turned into Caitlin, pronounced Kate-lyn, via the Irish American diaspora. I know a British Siobhan, who doesn’t use a fada, which would mean her name was pronounced Shivvun. I have met an English Sian who pronounces her name Sye-Anne. There was particularly annoying mini-trend in Ireland a while back for calling baby girls Aoibheann, pronounced Ay-VEEN, even though that combination of letters can’t be pronounced that way.

Butchering names like Rhys/Rhiannon/Rhian, not so much. And don’t get me started on Seren…

How should they be pronounced?

I'm gonna have a go! 'Reese/Reean-on/Ree-an'. I'll be eaten alive now 😂

I think Caitlín is a proper name though?

If I hadn't read this thread I would have called an Irish Deirdre Deer Dree because I couldn't possibly have known it was pronounced differently. That's not a lack of effort or arrogant, we can't possibly know how all names originating from different countries/languages are pronounced. If I was corrected and still persisted, that would be arrogant.

Well quite. You don't know what you don't know. Taking offence at someone genuinely not knowing how to pronounce your name, and just assuming they are arrogant, is totally unreasonable, wherever your name is from.

Ha Ha - Are you going to tell the Americans to stop mangling English names (and everything else?) that's just daft.

I disagree. If you appropriate a name from a different country or culture at least bloody pronounce it correctly.

Where do you draw the line? Many of the names which have commonly been used in English-speaking countries for hundreds of years were originally Greek, Spanish, French, Italian etc. Should we all be saying them with full-on authentic pronunciation?

I knew a Dierdre of Irish extraction. Who said it Deer-dree.

I’m not sure what point you think you’re making here. She wasn’t Irish. It’s hardly surprising she was pronouncing her name the way she presumably heard most around her. Also, if she was spelling it ‘Dierdre’, she was also misspelling it.

and then this depends where in Yorkshire… would Popp-eh be more wakefield or Barnsley?

I knew a few American Deirdres and everyone seemed to get that pronounced the Irish way. Very pretty name without the connotation of corrie and without the later difficulty of other more difficult Irish names. The Americans love their Irish names and the parents at least make an effort to get it authentic.

The worst over there was when Chloe was popular and there were a bunch of "KLOE-EEs" running around. The true pronunciation, ironically enough for this Deirdre thread is more "Kloe-ehy"

I think it was fairly recent extraction. And the typo is mine.

All I'm saying is that names get mispronounced all the time. My own has acquired a whole extra syllable compared to the original form.