Dafydd

[Welshgirl2019]

My husband and I are Welsh (kinda obvious ) and live in south East England and love this for a boys name. Just checking ppl are familiar with the spelling and pronunciation of the name? silly question really.
I've never come across a Dafydd in England before

Yes, Dav-ith. The th is like th in 'the'.
DD is always pronounced th (as in english the, this, there, their, etc).

Th as in thing, thong, Theo etc is TH.
Gwynedd and Gwyneth sound different.
In Welsh, DD and TH are both letters in their own right.

Echoing what other people say I wouldn't nice name but what if little britain makes a come back .Kids are cruel and he would be known as the only gay in the school

Little Britain is unlikely to make a comeback.

Little Britain for me too

The only gay in the village!

Wasnt daffyd the only gay in the village? 🤔

Yes, I'd be worried that Little Britain could make a comeback - poor kid would really be ribbed about it.

Wasnt daffyd the only gay in the village?

No. That was Dafydd.

Can I ask out of interest to all of you with superior knowledge of welsh names. Is Owen pronounced the same as Owain?

I’m not Welsh but live in Wales. I know two people called Owain.

One is pronounced like Owen, the other O-wine.

Owain is pronounced failrly similar to Owen. The difference is that the -en in Owen rhymes with when, and the -ain in Owain rhymes with wine.

Thank you.

You do realise that in Wales, there are thousands of people called Dafydd and no one thinks of the only gay in the village thing?

You're welcome. I am touchy about mispronounced Welsh names - my current gripe is Cariad. Not only is it a pretty silly name (it's welsh for Love, Charity, Lover, Girl/Boyfriend, Sweetheart) but it isn't pronounced Carry-ad. It's Car-yad. 2 syllables.

one of my colleagues is a Garth from N. Ireland and he is constantly having to correct people who call him Gareth

To be fair, though, Garth and Gareth do sound almost identical in most NI accents, with the result being that a person with a different accent might not understand that, in their own accent, it would be pronounced differently - a bit like a Scottish 'A' sometimes sounding like a northern English 'E'.

I understand that singer Chris Rea's surname should actually be pronounced 'ray' rather than 'rear' but if anybody asks Chris himself how to pronounce it, in his Middlesbrough accent, 'ray' will sound very much like 'rear' in most British accents, so obviously he would say his own name correctly, but if you repeated it back as heard with the NE intonations, but you have a completely different accent, it can get confusing!

I agree that 'dd' in Welsh does indeed sound like a soft English 'th' - as in 'with', but not 'thing' - that's what I was always taught.

Obviously, people differ, but a huge amount of English people (of which I'm one), who haven't had any real connections with Wales or Welsh, will pronounce unfamiliar (to them) Welsh names as if they were English, but even if corrected and they manage to repeat what you say, their heads will change it back to what they think it 'should' be. It's not (usually) done vindictively, but I think a lot of people subconsciously think that Welsh is a hobby language or a dialect of English using quirky spellings for the same sounds - and if the letters look the same, they can't understand how they could differ.

Thus with the name Llandudno, for example, most English speakers will initially ignore the second 'l' and say 'Lan-dudd-know'. When corrected, a lot will realise that you don't usually get a double 'l' at the beginning of words in English (except for the very odd word like 'llama', where it's pronounced as a single 'l'), so they will attempt to say it authentically - usually approximated as 'cl' or 'fl, as the sound is so unusual to them; however, because they see the 'u' and end-of-word 'o', which are commonly seen in English words, many just cannot grasp that they're pronounced as an English 'i' (as in 'win') and as an English 'o' (as in 'got') and their brains will 'correct' it.

Thus Hywel ('huh-well'), Geraint ('ger-int*) and even Sian ('sharn') will become 'high-well' or 'har-well', 'jer-aint' and 'sigh-ann'.
*'int' as in 'pint'

It's the same with Scots words like 'loch' - because it looks similar to the English word 'lock', some people can't get their heads around the fact that it's spelt differently - maybe they just think that 'ch' is the way Scottish accents pronounce the 'ck' sound?

because it looks similar to the English word 'lock', some people can't get their heads around the fact that it's spelt differently

That should say 'the fact that it's pronounced differently', of course.

I’m not Welsh but live in Wales. I know two people called Owain.

One is pronounced like Owen, the other O-wine.

Yep, that adds extra fun! I have a fairly new friend who's originally from Cardiff called 'Rhys', but he's always pronounced it 'Reece', with a silent 'h', and I always find myself wanting to pronounce it 'Hreece' before I mentally correct myself.

But Rhys isn't pronounce Hreece!

I live in the south east OP, and seeing Dafydd I would instantly see it was Welsh but before reading this thread would have no idea on pronouncing it correctly!

I would have guessed David. The actual pronounciation I am familiar with through TV etc, though never knew how it was spelt, so think I could have a fair stab of pronouncing right now.

As far as the 'it will always be called out wrong' thing, well it happens. My childs name is a traditional English one, that still gets called out wrong in the doctor's surgery because the staff aren't all English. You'll correct people once and they'll learn a bit of Welsh pronunciation.

MikeUniformMike

What is the proper pronunciation of Rhys?

But Rhys isn't pronounce Hreece!

Maybe I transliterated it weirdly. How would you express the sound of a traditional (possibly more north) Welsh pronunciation of the sound 'rh'?

I think Hreece sounds pretty close to how an English person might try to pronounce it (instead of just saying Rees). Bit difficult to put down on paper how a North Walian would pronounce it I'd have thought

In my experience, English people trying to copy my North Wales pronunciation of Rhys land on anything between Hreece and Hriz because none of the sounds have a familiar equivalent for them.

“maybe they just think that 'ch' is the way Scottish accents pronounce the 'ck' sound?”

I don’t think it is, I think it’s because there isn’t a ch sound in English so it’s hard to hear it properly and then reproduce it.

I hear ll in welsh as chl - though I know it’s not, but that’s the closest sound to it that I know how to make.

I would have pronounced it with a d, I'd be happy to be corrected. The only issue is giving your dc a name they are going to have to correct all the time. I had a surname that sounded like a first name, parents couldn't help it but it got trying.