Irish Baby Names- it doesnt spell right!

[Takingbabysteps]

Recently, my fiancé and I were discussing baby names, due to alot of our friends being pregnant and beginning to have babies.
When the topic came up of what we would name our babies, I suggested a couple of Irish names for a girl. Being Very proud of my Irishness (I should be the poster girl of Dublin- bright red hair, pale skin, cute freckles on the nose) I realised that when I moved to Surrey for my English partner, my Irishness came out multiplied by 100!
So I suggested Caoimhe. My fiancé liked it......until he asked the spelling. Unfortunately I dashed his idea that it was spelt K E E V A. It didnt go down well. He believes that his (english) friends would find our name very bizaare, especially because we would have to spell it phonetically.

Has anyone else gone through this dilemma. If so, who gives in?!

[JosieRosie]

OP, I agree with other posters who say you need to think about where you will live - UK or Ireland. I grew up in Ireland, 2 Irish parents and have a very Irish name but have lived in UK for 10 years and consider myself a Brit. I blinkin' hate my name - no bugger can pronounce it and even people I have known for years get it wrong! As a result, I encourage people to use use a shorter, nickname-version, which is much less stressful all round. I'm thinking of adopting the shorter version permanently

Don't think you 'just have to tell people once' how it's pronounced - your child will be constantly meeting new people as they grow up and it gets O.L.D. having to have the same conversation over and over again.

'i'm the poster girl for Ireland with my moussey brown hair and blue eyes'

Soooooo true - there are hardly any naturally red-haired people in Ireland! Most people have dark hair, pale skin and light coloured eyes. Where this red haired myth came from I do not know!

[Bandwithering]

True JosieRosie. this OP is fishy to me. I don't think she's actually Irish at all. I think she is polling for opinions, and there's nothing wrong with that but she's being a bit disingenuous along the line.

I am Irish and had my children in the UK so these issues are things I have thought about and things I understood. But OP dismisses my opinion with a wave of her freckled paw, telling me I'm not Irish lol.

Listen OP, good luck to you wherever you're from!! I hope your child gets a name that works in the uk and Ireland (for when you visit your grandparents and second cousins )

[KenDoddsDadsDog]

bunbaker my comment was totally tongue in cheek.
But if you don't know how to pronounce a name, you can always learn.

[sorchatallulah]

To be honest I've only heard Caitlín pronounced "kate-lin" once, and I spend 99% of my time in Belfast. Granted it's an Irish-speaking area of West Belfast but still. I imagine "kate-lin" spelt Katelyn or something. Don't think it's a great-sounding name.

Caoimhe is once that I like but I don't really like the anglicised "keeeeva". The first Caoimhe I ever met was from "down south" somewhere and she said it the proper way and I thought it was SO lovely, it was so disappointing to hear it the "kee" way every time since.

My name is Sorcha and even the people in the aforementioned area of Belfast don't often get it right. "Sorka" is generally what I'm called but it still feels like a nickname, I feel absolutely elated when people get it right. I don't really care what people call me as long as it isn't Seoirse, that's a pet-peeve as it's on my list for a future DS :P Getting back to my point, I don't think you need Irish ancestry or to be born in Ireland or whatever just to use an Irish name on your kid. Caoimhe is going to be mispronounced but there are probably areas anywhere that aren't going to say it. I don't think my name is anywhere near as popular as Caoimhe and people do still occasionally manage to get it right, so Caoimhe is probably one you're okay with. It also has the added bonus of "looking foreign", so people are more likely to ask how to say it. They're not likely to forget how to say it either, or insist on calling her some English phonetic version of her name. I say go for it. Just send out a text when she's born telling people her name is Caoimhe with "queeva" in brackets or something. I'm not sure how I'd spell it phonetically actually.

And to whoever said about their DH not being about to say/spell Maeve - you should have told him that's the easy way, he would have cried at Meadhbh :P

Okay, now I'm rambling, going to finish this off before I start up on something else.

[MissHonkover]

I can understand how someone may see an unfamiliar word and then mispronounce it, but seriously, there are people who hear a name of two syllables and still mispronounce it?

[cumbria81]

I think you're all being snobs.

Names and words are anglicised all the time - and other cultures do the same with our words and names.