AIBU to expect relatives to learn to spell and use DDs name?

[Bella5C]

my Dd is almost 2. I am a single parent with grown up children as well. Dd doesn’t know her biological father. He’s not in the picture. However, his family are. They see her weekly/fortnightly or less if they’re on holiday or have medical issues.
Dd has an Irish spelt name. It’s probably one of the harder ones to spell/pronounce. I love it, I learned immediately how to spell it. I have no concerns that she will struggle. As far as I’m concerned once you know how to spell it, you know? People still spell my name and my grown up kids names wrong so I look at it like, with it being quite a unique name, you are going to learn it so you’re not getting it completely wrong.
my Issue is that her relatives (not mine) refuse to learn how to spell it and just refer to her as ‘the wee one’. I easily picked up on this in their texts and didn’t think too much of it. Accepted it really, but then, her Grandmother said to me ‘oh he (her partner) saw a woman holding a child at the end of the road and stopped and said he thought it was Bella5C and the wee one’
she obviously heard herself as she then said to me when leaving, I call her the wee one because I don’t know how to spell her name? AIBU to assume she doesn’t like her name and is refusing to use it? I can understand not spelling it in a text if you think you’ll spell it wrong but to not say her name out loud and use that excuse is surely, a load of crap? Just looking for opinions really, although I may eventually say something?

I mean, it’s sort of an occupational
hazard of giving your kid an unusual name. I’ve got a Welsh variant of an English name and get called anything that looks vaguely similar, despite my name being properly phonetically decidable. Some unusual names just lend themselves to phrases like “wee one”

OP, I'd just ask whether she's unsure of the spelling/pronunciation. I have one of the tricky names mentioned in previous posts and just overexplain to make sure people get it. Part of the deal living in the UK with an Irish name. I'll say 'here's an easy way to remember it' or I'll explain how letters group to make different sounds in Irish. I like talking about my culture so no skin off my nose and means name is likely pronounced right next time!

In ni most people prounce keevah. Iv never heard it pronounce queeva until I googled just now

But the grandma has said she doesn’t know how to spell it, so just remind her. When you’re sending photos, you can add “ Here’s Caoimhe at the park” . You could break down the spelling for her something like “Caio is pronounced Kee and the mhe is pronounced va “( or however it works, I’m not Irish) . Keep referring to her name in writing, eventually she’ll get it.

Laziness, stupidity, lack of effort, xenophobia, specific anti-Irishness, just inertia?

Maybe play them the ‘Jonathan’ sketch from Goodness Gracious Me, OP.

To be fair if it’s sadhbh. Lots of Irish adults still struggle with that so wouldn’t take it personally .

As someone who works with children and is faced with non-English names all the time, I think your family are being lazy and rude. It feels deliberate to me.

It really is very simple to learn how to pronounce a name. And if they struggle with the spelling, they can write it down and stick it to the fridge as a reminder.

Beautiful name, by the way.

I am a teacher in England. I teach several girls called Aoife. They all request different pronunciations, from Eev-ee, to Ay-vuh to Ee-fah. I teach 2 girls called Niamh - easy, except one spells it Niamh, one spells it Naimh.
My point is this. Spell it out for this person, literally. Then write it out phonetically. If they still get it wrong, they're being awkward.

Write that out so she can stick it on the fridge or wherever. Maybe she can just get "Keeva" in her mind, then when it needs to be written, she can copy the proper spelling.

As an Irish person, who knows lots of Caoimhe’s, I also struggle as that’s not how Caoimhe is pronounced. It’s the English equivalent of trying to train people to say ‘Kevin’ when the child’s name is spelt ‘Kelvin’. It might be easier for her in the future, and given she’s still so young, to change the spelling of her name to align with how you would like it to be pronounced ie ‘Keeva’.

I have a very typical English name and people still mis-spell it frequently.

TBH, I think they've just got in the habit of calling her 'the wee one' and it's stuck, rather than it being name related - although I might be wrong.

I wouldn't be upset about it though - terms of endearment are fine, your daughter knows her name, her cousins know her name, as she gets older I'm sure they'll switch to her name.

TBH, I sometimes refer to our grandchild as “little one” in texts, etc. Though I can, of course, spell his name

My mum still spells my stepdad’s name incorrectly after 45 years. It’s not even a complicated name!

Write the name with the phonetic pronunciation underneath in big letters and put it on their fridge with a magnet, saying it's to make it easier for them. My dear mum referred to everyone as dear and, if she had to use a name it was pot luck (usually a list of 4 or 5). We never minded and it became a gentle family joke.

We find that happens a lot as we get older!

My friend who is not Irish has given her daughter an Irish name which few people pronounce properly. We have all tried and all been told off for not saying it correctly. Now all scared to try again or ask as she gets cross. We have to say how’s your gorgeous daughter or little one.

Caoimhe isn't pronounced as Keeva though... so maybe that is where your family are struggling a bit? It's pronouced as Kwee-va so even as an Irish person I would get it wrong if you told me her name was Keeva, as I would just spell it Keeva.

Have you explained the name? So I have found when I explain my name people understand it much better when I explain that there is no v in the Irish alphabet so bh and mh are the way that v is spelled. So if she's called Siobhan then people seem to understand that the v replaces the bh if I explain it that way

Keeva is also used in dublin area. I'm not sure about the rest of leinster.

I would pronounce it Qweevah as that would be the norm in my dialect. Keeva sounds wrong to me but I know it's correct in other dialects. There are multiple dialects in Irish which result in different pronunciations for various words/sounds.

My nephew is 20 and I still have to double check before writing his name down in messages/cards to ensure I get it right. I don’t really know why I can’t remember it, but I have never been able to.

You expect your in laws to call your DD by her name but then you pronounce it wrong.Caoimhe is not prounounced Keeva, they are two different names.

How should it be pronounced?

I would pronounce Caoimhe Quee vah.
I am Irish and find some Irish names hard, my neice is called Caoilfhionn and I struggled with that for a while. She pronounces it Quee lin.
I think they need to take the time to learn the spelling and pronunciation. Could you write it down on paper for them and underneath write how you say it phonetically. At least then they have it, sometimes it's embarrassing to ask.

Oh I need to know your name now!!

Not so. Caoimhe is regional. It’s ‘Queevuh’ around here generally, but Keevuh elsewhere in Ireland, equally correctly.

I would say vah not vuh, seems like it has lots of variations.
I loved Roisin for my daughter ( row sheen) but didn't use it because I hate the rosh een pronunciation used in other parts of Ireland.