Neve, Nieve or Niamh?

[orangeunicorn]

Ttc at the moment but already set on a girls name. Just curious as to how people think it's best spelt

I think English monoglot speakers need to learn how to say and spell Gaelic names, it's not hard. Go with Niamh, your DH is wrong with this one, many, if not most people do actually know how to say it.

The fact that Niamh isn't spelled how it sounds is my biggest pet piamh.

Don't be a dick.

It is spelled how it sounds. Siobhan, Caiomh, Aoife and Meadhbh are also spelled how they sound... in Irish.

mh makes a v sound in the Irish language, enile.
If there’s a “joke” involved, it’s on you that you didn’t know this but took the piss anyway.

I like your joke @eniledam even if some others don't get it!

Definitely Niamh. I've known how to pronounce it (and Grainne and Siobhan and Aoife etc) for at least 20 years and am not Irish (or Scots), have no family who are, and have never lived there.

People say names differently, depending on their accents. DH and I pronounce our children's names differently because our accents differ -they're still the same name! Just as we'd pronounce 'door' differently, it's still the same word! So call her whichever one you like and pronounce it as you like. I'm in Scotland and people here would generally pronounce 'Niamh' as 'Neev' and assume 'Neev' was spelled 'Niamh', but I suppose it depends on your area. Both my DCs have names with multiple spellings, it really doesn't bother me if people spell them wrong, but if you think it'd bother you you might want to look at other names

@AlpacaLypse Thank you!

@amusedbush It was a joke! A play on the word 'peeve'. Wow.

eniledam

Autistic here... this sometimes goes over my head.

I think we got it, just found it a bit offensive, there’s a difference

Niamh. If you're going to go with an Irish name, then use the traditional spelling.
I have an Irish friend called Caoilfhionn. Work that one out ;)

My daughter is called Niamh. We live in England and I am English and DH is Irish. I think Niamh is so common over here that most people recognise it when they see it written and pronounce it correctly. My other daughter however has a name which is really common in Ireland but less so in England and no one ever pronounces it correctly!

We nabbed our baby with a traditional gaelic spelling - along with his double barreled surname, no hypen, it is a mouthful to spell out each time. And my side of the family can't pronounce it at all 🙄

But we love it so much that it's worth the painful spelling and mispronouncations. Hopefully he will love it too.

eniledam plus my sister Niamh thinks that's hilarious.

I much prefer Niamh.

Pendant alert for the following!

The reasons why Irish Gaelic spelling is 'different' from English is because Gaelic contains different sounds (phonemes) from English. When Irish was/is written down using the English language alphabet, various different combinations of letters had/have to be used to represent the different sounds.

As many of the the previous posters have shown, there is no neat and easy way to reproduce the Gaelic sounds of 'Naimh' in English language spelling. It is not exactly the name as Neeve or even Neave, though I would say that is slightly closer.

* mh makes a v sound in the Irish language, enile.*

If there’s a “joke” involved, it’s on you that you didn’t know this but took the piss anyway.

The whole point of the joke is that 'mh' makes a v sound in Irish.

I think you're getting mad at the wrong person!

Tinkerhel It's not Nia-uv, but Nee-uv.

The A element of the IA dipthong is pronounced as a schwa (a neutral vowel sound) not an outright A.

The schwa is denoted in dictionaries by the symbol 'ə'. It's used in millions of words in every language.

Yeah there’s quite a few stupid people that don’t realise Irish is actually a different language with different phenomes!

I have an Irish friend called Caoilfhionn.

I wonder if we know the same one, it not being a wildly common name. She's very cool.

I know several.

Lol at 'pet piamh'!

But yes the only option here is Niamh.

Not too many in their 50s, though, or not in my experience...?

@BlessedImelda, my friend had to give up when she moved to the UK and now spells it Keelin at work. Absolutely nobody could pronounce it and she got tired of being called "Quailfin" which is as close as most people got.

I have a Niamh who is 14, sometimes a receptionist will check
“ Spelled NIAMH? “ but most people know it.
I’ve just asked her and she says it’s ages since she had to spelll it out for .

I know a few Caoilfhionns in their 50s - met them all in Irish College. They were all real Caoilfhionns too - not names that were adopted to Gaelicise names like Kelly or Kyley for Irish College purposes.

No, they’re all under fourteen

How do you pronounce Caoilfhionn?