In Scotland Wales and Ireland (UK bit)

[JazzAnnNonMouse]

Is it more common to have a very scottish Welsh Irish name or a more English easily pronouncible one in a say a class of kids?
Does this depend on areas eg close to borders are more anglicised? Or just those with english connections (family possible moves etc)
There are so many names that are so beautiful that I'd never heard of before reading them on here but theyre almost never pronounced how I expected

Wow, Irish names are fairly popular in protestant circles down south. Not that there even are rigid protestant circles anymore. It's all so fluid now.

It's like my generation and maybe the generation a decade beneath me finally has the confidence to fully claim their right to be as Irish as their catholic compatriots! of course, that's if you dig deep and try to analyse other people's subconscious. It could just be a case of I love that name and nobody is going to bat an eyelid if I use them!

Fair dues OP - Ireland is complicated :-) As baby name threads go, this on has been interesting!

To answer your question about "Ais" always sounding like "Ash" - in Irish I think it does. I've been sitting here going through Irish words (I'm a bit rusty) and any I came up with had the ash sound.

I took my NN from Saoirse Ronan, who explains her name in USA interviews as "Saoirse like inertia"... which I thought was a pretty clever way to get people to remember it. I've heard a few grumbles that she is saying her own name wrong - so what hope does anyone else have?

There are different pronunciations throughout Ireland, never mind trying to say them in Irish/Gaelic isn't a language you are used to. Niamh can be Neeev or Ne-uv, or Caoimhe can be Ceeva or Queeva for example.
"Mh" in Irish is a V sound in the middle or end of a name, like Niamh, but I think (I am open to correction!) that it's a W sound at the start on a name.

Saoirse yes I was trying to work out how to explain the sound when Mh is at the beginning of a name- like a mix between a w and a v? No idea how to sound it out in English. It's almost like the sound at the beginning of Wirrel near Liverpool?!

It's even more complicated than I thought!
I've never heard of a niamh being pronounced ne uv only neev but the only niamhs I know have english parents with irish heratige eg their grandparents.

There seem to be quite a few combinations of letters that can make the v sound?

Saoirse is pronounced sersha?
I wouldve tried soreece I think. What letree combinations make the sh noise?

Jazz bh also makes a V sound in Irish. Like in Meabh. It isn't easy if you haven't grown up with it, and even then I don't nessacarily know 'the rules' as such I just know how to pronounce things when I see them written down from practice.

S followed by an i or an e

In the Irish language, bh and mh are pronounced as a v.
S can be ssss or sh. You can see that in the name Saoirse.
When you address someone directly say "A" and then their name, which changes the case. If possible that will add a h as the second letter and usually an i in the last vowel group. So Tomás... a Thomáis.... and to complicate it further, in the example I've given, the ssss of Tomás becomes a ssh. And th has a h sound. Some consonants cannot take a h, e.g. Liam... A Liam... and many names don't take an i.

I'll get me coat.

I work with an English lady here in Dublin and we have a database of 100s of people that we contact periodically. She often has to ask me how to say names, and she has been here years. Like PP said, when you've grown up saying names, you forget how weird they look/sound to others. I remember her asking me about a lady called Síle

I am originally from Donegal though (and, no, we can't donate the county to NI to make things handier), and there are fairly noticable differences in pronunciation of names from north to south of the (entire) island - like Róisín - I say it to rhyme a bit with "washing" , down here it's pronounced Roe-sheen

I have literally not a clue now haha

I don't think I've ever actually heard someone speak Irish. Only heard English with an irish accent - equally scottish.
I've heard people speak Welsh.

Is Irish and Scottish used everyday? I'm going to youtube it and hear them spoken :-)

Irish is spoken every day in a few areas of Ireland. There is a lot of effort made to stop the language dying out.

Is it taught in schools?
Are there Irish speaking schools like there are Welsh? Irish as a first language?

It's compulsory in all Irish schools and yes there are Irish speaking schools where everything is taught through Irish.

Does anyone know if thats the same in Scotland?

There's a big push for Scots in Scottish schools. The language is called Scots, not Scottish. Children's books are available in Scots, for example Geordie's Minging Medicine (George's Marvellous Medicine).

There are Gaelic medium schools. Gaelic is also evolving and the traditional score numeric system is likely to go within a generation.

Just catching up with this thread today, and glad to see everyone is friends again!

Cloeycat Scots Gaelic isn't a good term as it combines the name of the Scots language (Anglic) with the Gaelic language (Celtic). It's most correct to say Scottish Gaelic, although it is genenally just shortened to Gaelic. Irish Gaelic is usually just called Irish, and Manx Gaelic is generally just called Manx.

OP, like Irish, mh and bh become a v sound in Scottish Gaelic, although depending on where they occurs in a word they can also be silent.

Gaelic isn't compulsory in lowland Scottish schools, but it's available as an option but it depends on availability, i.e. whether the school has as Gaelic speaking teacher. Separate qualifications are available in Gaelic for native speakers and learners. There are Gaelic-medium nurseries in Glasgow and Edinburgh, but I'm not sure about schools they can attend once they reach the age of 5. Perhaps someone else knows? There are Gaelic-medium schools in the more traditional Gaelic-speaking areas.

Scots doesn't get the same recognition or funding as Gaelic so is used far less in schools. In fact it was practically non-existent until recently, apart from learning a bit of Burns poetry every January, however it seems to be creeping back into use in schools, as a form of literature.

Glad you enjoyed the language link!

This thread is really interesting. I'm Welsh (and a fluent Welsh speaker) but I know embarrassingly little about the languages of Scotland or Ireland.

So are there names that are Scots and names that are gaelic?

Francis that is interesting. Do people in the area tend to speak mainly English or gaelic?

Without getting tangled in the Irish geo-political situation....

We are in Glasgow. Many of the parents at my children's school are Scottish, but few are Gaelic speaking. We also have children from lots of other parts of the world. Some of the kids have the same "English" names that you'd find anywhere in the UK - Sophie, Hannah, Lucy, Katie, James, Thomas, William etc. There are lots of Scottish names which are recognisably Scottish, but easy to pronounce and understand for everyone - Rory, Innes, Blair, Fraser, Iona, Isla, Euan, Fergus, Gregor, Ross etc.

There is only one child I can think of who is Ruaraidh rather than Rory, but he pronounces his name Roo-Ree rather than Roh-Ree. We haven't any Ceiteidh instead of Katie or Ciorstaidh instead of Kirsty.

As far as the Holland/Netherlands thing goes....

Holland is indeed a region in The Netherlands. The Netherlands is split into twelve provinces, two of which are Zuid-Holland and Noord-Holland (South and North Holland). Historically, Holland was just one province that was split up to become the two. The provinces are a political and administrative subdivision, rooted in a long history. The idea that it has something to do with the land being reclaimed made me laugh.

In the past, Holland was always where the bulk of the political and economic power was located, so that's part of the reason why Holland and The Netherlands became synonymous. Actually, the centre of politics (The Hague) and the capital (Amsterdam) are still located in Holland, as is much else.

Of course, the history behind it is a lot more complicated than that, but this is probably not the place to go into it.

As a rule of thumb, most people from the non-Holland provinces prefer not to refer to the country as Holland, but I don't think I've ever met anyone who gets seriously offended when non-Dutch people use it. And Holland is often used abroad as it's easier, even by those who are technically not from there.

Horatio is there two Dialects spoken in Scotland, Gaelic and Scots or is it one Dialect which an anglicized name (scots) and the Gaelic name (Gaelic)?

I've always found when listening to Scottish people speaking their Gaelic I've understood most of it but written down its so different from Irish I only pick up every few words unless I really concentrate. I find the correlation between all the dialects really interesting.