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?

In Ireland it's usually Quee vah but apparently in NI it's Keeva.

I actually cannot believe the vote weighting.

It’s utterly disrespectful for her relatives to not learn her name. It’s very, very easy to learn the pronunciation and spelling of a close friend family member.

It fucking English imperialism to suggest it’s too hard and you need to make something up.

It’s a different language. Something can be pronounced phonetically without it being English.
Hope that helps.

It was as they were leaving in the car and I just said, yeah it takes a bit of practice.
it wasn’t really until after the exchange that I thought about it and how it didn’t really make sense but I suppose if you are used to saying a name phonetically then I never really thought about it that way. I just felt it seemed a little ignorant. I didn’t challenge her calling her wee one, I never have, but when she offered the explanation off hearing herself, that also came across a bit defensive.

certainly just overthinking it. Some people (including family) just aren’t going to get it.

people can learn a different name if they have any desire to do so. And seriously asking people to change their names in order to facilitate others is….. well when it happened where I worked (NHS), it was quite a issue and people got pulled up on it - rightly so.

This is a message board for opinions. I have mine and you have yours. Simply put, if you can’t pronounce the name then a nickname should suffice.

Sorry Jade is too hard for me, I think we’ll rename you Joe. 🍪

I think the post has branched out into being more about the name specifically and the complexities in a general sense rather than about whether or not I should be offended that a grandparent may/may not be refusing to use it?
it’s fine, been quite an interesting read as expected!

The Caoimhe I know is definitely 'Keeva' and is from Enniskillen, does that make a difference?

Keeva is an anglicised pronunciation of the name Caoimhe. If someone is going to give a child an Irish name they should at least pronounce it the way it’s intended.

There are different accents within a country. Shocking.

I mean... She's Irish. So I'm not sure how she's anglicised her own name.

And Irish is also phonetic 🤷‍♀️.

You're trying to understand how a word in a language you don't understand and therefore don't understand is phonetically straightforward to those who speak the language?

Nope, I'm not having a bad day at all. I'm just somewhat bemused at you having an opinion on the level of phoneticness of a language you don't understand. I don't understand Finnish. I have no idea if it is phonetic or not.

As its Irish...

Irish is not a latin language. It's a celtic language, although it does share some roots with Latin languages.

Sure except your opinion gets you sent to the cultural sensitivity aka “how not to be a racist” training. Simply put, if you decide to call people a different name because you have an issue with non english names, people will call you something too but you sound like the kind of person who would be okay with that.

Loads of Irish names have been anglicised and some do retain the Irish spelling but still have an anglicised pronunciation, for example Aoibheann said as Ayveen or Niall said as Ny-al. Many Irish people (most?) use these pronunciations and sometimes they don’t realise they are anglicisations. Lots of Irish people don’t speak much Irish. Enniskillen is in NI so people typically have less Irish there.

Not sure the Keeva pronunciation of Caoimhe comes into the category of an anglicisation though. Many have said it’s a Northern pronunciation and it is that, though I’m not certain how a native Irish speaker from Donegal would say it 🤔

She is, depending on the Irish dialect. I would say it as Qweeva but a friend of dd's who is from Dublin pronounces if keeva.

I'm Irish, speak Irish and that's how I pronounce Caoimhe 😂

Mh it's v in caoimhe but Mh at the beginning of a name would be pronounced wuh. But that's because the h is a modifier to a name that starts with an m. So Máire becomes A Máire when you are addressing Máire.

Should have added about the w sound too but didn’t want to complicate things! It’s also dialectal anyway. In Munster ‘a Mháire’ is ‘a Vaw-ra’ 😁

@OchonAgusOchonOh
I know, but neither are Russian/Polish/Ukrainian (Slavic), nor German/Danish (Germanic) - and my friends from all these various countries are able to 'read out' these various languages even if not similar to their own.

But none of us can do that with Irish.

Slavic, Latin and Germanic languages must be much more similar amongst them vs Irish

That would be the 800 years of oppression and the concerted efforts to kill off the Irish language.

A lot of Irish names have been anglicised in their pronunciation, particularly on the east coast. Add to that regional dialects plus the influence of Scots gaelic on ulster Irish and you end up with a lot of variety.

Yes that is true. Apologies for my connemara centric focus 😁