Favourite Irish names

[NoGoodDeed]

Tell me your favourite Irish names, along with pronunciation.

[kenandbarbie]

Yeah coz no one in Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham etc has any Irish relatives

[InionEile]

I actually live in the USA, FourFried and Irish names are very popular here, among all ethnicities, so your experiences might reflect reality for some people in England but is definitely not reality for kids with Irish names around the world.

I know boys in my area here called Seamus, Liam, Aidan, Connor and Logan and not all of them have Irish heritage. Girls names tend more towards Kayla, Brianna, Megan and other Americanised version of Irish girls names, so fewer Aoifes and Siobhans here but, still, Irish names are popular with a lot of people.

Teachers here don't sneer at kids' names because you don't always know the child's ethnic background and it would be a big problem teaching in a diverse area if you can't show respect for the cultures of the families in your school.

[Shutupanddance1]

Delighted to see my DDs names and my niece names on this thread! I’m Irish, live abroad and people generally are lovely about my girls names - I’ve went all in and gave them the Irish spelling, fadas and all

I love Aobh, Connor, Niamh and Aoibheann - all I didn’t get to use - maybe in the future

[FourFriedChickensDryWhiteToast]

" Can’t speak for living in Wales but I’ve certainly never had a Welsh person be able to magically pronounce my name and to the untrained eye the languages look rather different. "

yes. but I was talking more about attitude than pronunciation.

[noonecansayit]

Personally I think that if you don't live in London, Ireland or Wales, and you have no Irish heritage, giving your child a name that they have to explain every time they say it to a new person, is setting them up for a lifetime of paininthearseness.

It really isn’t though. It’s not hard or embarrassing. Quite frequently it’s a useful icebreaker. And it means you are very likely to be remembered. I posted as much on one of the other threads but I think it bears repeating

PS living in London and having Irish heritage make no difference. Can’t speak for living in Wales but I’ve certainly never had a Welsh person be able to magically pronounce my name and to the untrained eye the languages look rather different.

I’m not sure about Irish names getting a worse deal than others. I wouldn’t pronounce Sergio or Francois phonetically but nor would I sound particularly Spanish or French when I said them - my version would be an approximation and I think that’s true of most people. Or if I’m speaking to someone who has a name that exists in English (say Victor, or Daniel) but they are Spanish then I will say it the English way rather than the Spanish way. Likewise they will say my name with their accent.

[Sessy19]

@ifiwasabird I wholeheartedly agree. And that goes for ALL names. MN has a weird tradition of being too conservative. A predispositionfor trying to anglecise names for the ‘greater good of protecting children from having a difficult name’, which is an archaic attitude to our multinational culture here in the UK. My step kids go to school with children from Nairobi, Ghana, the carrivean, Iran, Bangladesh, Syria, Serbia and all parts of the UK, so names that are not culturally traditional isn’t frowned upon... I don’t know why they would be picked on unless the children who name-call have parents who condone such bigoted attitudes. And that is more their problem than mine.

[IfIWasABirdIdFlyIn2ACeilingFan]

I have to say I am loving The recent boom in Irish names threads on MN. It gives me hope that more people are just saying “fuck them” and naming their children beautiful names regardless of whether lazy people can bring themselves to pronounce them or not. It’s the 21st century. The world is small and we have names from all nations and backgrounds in the U.K. Get fucking used to it! English is not the only language, England is not the only country. If someone doesn’t know how to spell a name they get to practise their manners and ask!

[itssquidstella]

Saoirse
Oisín (have I put the fada in the right place?)
Caoimhe

Cian
Cillian

[soupforbrains]

Fionnuala is one of my favourites (fin-oo-la) and along with Aoife , Soairse, Niamh, Caoimhe and Maeve, is common/popular in my family. I agree broadly speaking with the pronunciations given here but some of them are harder to express than the simplified way they've been written here. Like Aoife for example, there is a fraction of an a sound at the start of the ee sound, and the f in the middle should sort of start as a v and become an f... but it's harder to explain. Same goes for Saoirse.

I also love Tiarna (tear-na, [tear as in crying not a rip]) and Tiarnan (tear-nun) for a boy, again we have both in the family.

Also LOVE Fionn (fin) for a boy, also Donncha (Done-acka), Eirnan (air-nin) and Ferdia

Obviously the more obscure the irish name the more people may not know how to spell/pronounce it but I don't think that matters at all.

[FourFriedChickensDryWhiteToast]

..it even happened to a relative of mine with a less popular Irish name, from the teachers at her school. Mocking it and mispronouncing it on purpose.
Mind you now that she is a teacher herself, she finds Polish surnames hilarious.
Maybe they cover name mocking at TT college, I don't know.

[CherryBlossom23]

Meant to add though, don't let that stop you OP! Crack on with an Irish name and spread the word so we can end headless mispronunciation

[FourFriedChickensDryWhiteToast]

" Fuck them. " true, true.

[CherryBlossom23]

I agree, some people can be funny about Irish names, but in a sneery way. Fuck them. My argument is, if you can learn to pronounce Tchaikovsky, Beyonce, and a whole host of foreign footballers names (Neymar, Agüero, Dembele, Schmeichel) you can wrap your tongue around an Aoife, Róisín, Cillian or Ciarán.
People are lazy when it comes to Irish names, probably because they subconsciously view them as 'inferior' so they think they can continually mispronounce it and it's no big deal. It doesn't get done to any Francois or Sergios or Ilarias though 🤔

[FourFriedChickensDryWhiteToast]

" Oops no, it’s not 1955 so it’s totally ok for anyone to give their child any name that reflects their heritage and take pride in where they come from. Phew. Thank goodness for that. "

I can assure you that I was born way after 1955.
Anyway OP clearly stated that she is not Irish, doesn't live in Ireland.
Personally I think that if you don't live in London, Ireland or Wales, and you have no Irish heritage, giving your child a name that they have to explain every time they say it to a new person, is setting them up for a lifetime of paininthearseness.

And quite honestly a lot of English people are quite ignorant about 'funny names' esp if they are Irish. I am "just saying".

Mumsnet doesn't represent real life in the UK.

[kettleonplease]

Aoife - ee fa
Maeve - may ve

[Enko]

@FourFriedChickensDryWhiteToast
These are lovely names, but unless you live in Ireland or London, people will just say 'what , what? and even mock.

Do not live in Ireland Do not live in London. Have no Irish connection Have a daughter called Aoife.. She doesn't get mocked. No one says " what?" Some might say "How do you spell that / say that" (on hearing/ seeing)

Her main issue with her name is people saying " Efer" not Ee-fa When they first hear it. Over all she likes it, and she likes knowing she was given her name simply because her dad and I thought it was beautiful.

Have friends with Roisin and Siobhan, work with an Aisling None of them have issues over names after they have first spelled them out.

[Allycumpooster]

villainous I actually have now idea how to spell it as it’s over 30 years since I saw it written down and my dyslexic brain has a tendency to see a scattering of random letters when I look at irish names . I love them though and would happily have used an Irish name had DH let me ( I am irish but live in UK)

[LivLemler]

Aoibheann is pronounced Ee-vin/vun. Aoi makes an ee sound, as in Aoife, not an Ay sound. That would be Ao, with no I. Or, I guess, Éi.

[Glumglowworm]

I really love Saoirse

Also Aoife and Maura

For a boy, Daragh or Lorcan

[MotherForkinShirtBalls]

Naoise, not Noise. Seems autocorrect doesn't like Irish names.

[MotherForkinShirtBalls]

Noise can also be a girl's name. And I love Aisling above but prefer the Ash-ling pronunciation.

Senan is gorgeous for a boy and I love Fionn.

[Ariel88]

Orlaith - Orla is my fave

[harrietm87]

Dearbhla (dervla) for a girl and Donncadh (don-acka) for a boy

[Tutulafromage]

Colleen 💚

[FacelikeaBagofHammers]

Donnacha
Malachy