Aoibhe

[lemniscate]

My cousin in Ireland just had a baby girl called Aoibhe. Would you pronounce it Eva or Ava? Or something else?

I'd just ask them how to pronounce it, tbh. I checked Google, though, and they mostly said 'Eev'.

I would say Eva.

Eva.

Thanks! I will check pronunciation when I talk to them but wanted to be able to say 'is it pronounced Eva?' rather than 'how the hell do you say that?'

Eeva?

I'd have guessed Ava.

I would have though Aoibhe is pronounced Eva as Ava is spelled Éabha.

It's pronounced Ava

Eeva. The aoi letter combo makes quite a long ee sound.

Aoife is pronounced eefa
Caoimhe is pronouned Queeva
So surely Aoibhe is eeva rather than ava.

Eve, the one I know is pronouced Eve anyway.

My Cousin calls her self Eefa I'd describe it a hard E

I'd pronounce it ay-oi-bh

Irish names boggle my brain.

Methe, it's offputting to see all those BHs, etc., but in Irish correspondence of sounds to letters is actually much more regular and predictable than in English.
AOI = ee (The other letter that makes this sound is í / Í)
BH = v
Final E = eh (like the initial vowel sound of 'every')

It is pronounced Eve. I have a cousin with the samename/spelling.

Aoife is actually pronounced EEFA

Thanks Math, I appreciate you taking the time to do that.

I have the same problem with Shawn and Sean though. Sean bean will always be Seen Bean in my mind

So her name is pronounced "Eeva" :)
Thanks all!

Sean should really be Seán, with the accent on the A lengthening the vowel sound.
Without the accent, the word is pronounced 'shan', meaning 'old' (hence the prefix 'shan-' in many Irish placenames, even names in NI such as the Shankill Road in Belfast = 'old church road')

SE / SI = sheh / shih
SLI = Shlih.
SCE = shkeh (as in 'uisce' = ishkeh. 'Uisce bheatha', pr. 'ishkeh vaha' = the water of life, aka 'whiskey', a corruption of the Irish term).

With the other vowels, A, O and U, S has the usual sss sound.

I knew a Seán from Derry who pronounced it Shan. He told us that Catholics in the North pronounce it Shan and Protestants pronounce it Shawn. I was very puzzled by this!

Methe, I have always wondered what Sean Bean's parents were thinking, to be honest. Maybe he himself spells his first name properly with the fada, and it just never makes it into print, but there's something pretty confusing about putting together a name that operates on non-Irish people being able to distinguish between how two different languages pronounce something that looks like the same vowel sound...

I know one called Eve

I have always fancied Sean Bean, but my partner insists on calling him Seán Bán (after Seán Bán Breathnach, fellow Irish people ).

V true, in NI accents can identify the foot you kick with. The word sean (meaning old) would not be pronounced the same as the name Seán in the Derry RC accent. More like 'shone'.

Actually 'Bean' in Irish means 'woman', pronounced 'ban'. So doubly confusing.

And Sean Bean means old woman!