Sine?

[toucanem]

Husband is half Scottish/ half Irish so we're looking for a traditional Gaelic name. Thoughts on Sine? How would you pronounce it?

We have a 4 syllable surname so want a one-two syllable first name.

Middle name will be a traditional Welsh name (my side), we're thinking Ffion, Alys or Elin.

@midsomermurderess

Orla very much has an 'r' in it outside of the SE and RP pronounciation.

I’m from NW England. I say Awe-Luh. One of my Scouse students is called Orlaith and also pronounces it Awe-La.

The only people I know who say Orrrrrr-La/luh have rotic accents (Scots, Irish, Americans, Eastern Europeans, Bristolians, Cornish etc). It’s not the vast majority of English people by a long stretch.

Did you guys miss the ACTUAL person called Sine who told you how to pronounce it?

Would be nicknamed Trigger or Calculus

I would avoid giving a child a name that has to be forever spelled out and is often mispronounced. It must be so frustrating having to keep correcting people when they get it wrong! Keep it simple is my motto

I see that OP has had a change of heart in this particular case, but whatever the name is, I would say, as a general rule, that you never want to give a child a name which will be pronounced with a question mark at the end (and possibly two or three faint inflected guesses) by almost everybody they meet.

Yes, people could learn it, but in reality, lots of people will only ever meet you once or twice and have no reason to learn it, and many of those who have regular associations with you still won't see the need to bother.

To be blunt, your name effectively WILL BE 'Sign' or whatever - insofar as your name is essentially what people call you. You will know that it should be pronounced differently, but you don't actually use your name much yourself, except when introducing yourself initially. You won't be constantly using the name to address or get the attention of yourself.

You can be 100% right and they 100% wrong, but they won't be bothered or irritated in the slightest when they call you what they believe and have decided your name to be; you on the other hand, will be the one who goes through your whole life with that constant irritation, to the extent that you might even end up being reluctant to tell people your name; and that just has the result of defeating the object of what a name is actually for.

We really wanted to give our DS a particular Welsh name, but we don't live in Wales any more, and we knew that people would almost certainly pronounce it how you would assume using standard English pronunciation. Either that or they would assume we'd gone for a yooneek spelling of a similar well-known English (well, Hebrew originally) name and call him that whilst thinking we were dim. It is a nice name, but it's not the one we wanted for him to be called, and didn't have the same special connection to our family, so we accepted reality and used it for a middle name instead.

Did you guys miss the ACTUAL person called Sine who told you how to pronounce it?

Did you miss that there are different ways to pronounce it depending on where you are or what version of it you want? You can't say it's an Irish name, for example, while spelling and saying it the Danish way.
Do keep up.

The pronunciation the poster is interested in is the Scottish one, not the Danish etc ones. Hence the other poster referring others to the Scottish Sine.

Or Irish. She's not sure (or maybe doesn't get they are different?)

@Fufumuji is there really any need for the snarkiness 🙄 FGS give it a bleeding rest.

@SionnachRua

I'm all for Irish and Scottish names but this one just makes me think of cos and tan.

Is it pronounced Shee-na, possibly?

First thought Cos Tan Sine. Never seen that name before.

What snarkiness? It genuinely seems like people think its all the same thing.

@ProudAuntie76

I read it the same way you would pronounce “sign” though that’s obviously down to my ignorance! Even though I’m a Celt!

It made me think of Maths. Trigonometry.
Sine. Cosine etc.

I'm a Scot and was thinking the same thing

Sine wave!

Not all Scottish names are Gaelic. Scotland's linguistic landscape is more complex than Ireland's.

As @florascotia2 says, "Sìne" (with what we call a sràc fada over the i, and said "Sheena") may be a Scots Gaelic spelling of Norman French "Jean"/"Jeanne". However, there may be several similar names. It may be a feminine version of "Siothchàn" (peaceful one), or a Scots Gaelic interpretation of Old Norse "Signy" (means "new victory").

"Sine" (no accent and said "Seena") seems to be a name (probably also from "Signy") in Norn or Orkadian, the languages descended from Norse and spoken in Scotland in the recent-ish past. That makes this name Scottish too. To me that's intriguing and worth celebrating. The OP clearly got this name from somewhere and may have family with this name.

Síne (with what we call a "síne fada" over the i and said "Sheena") would be an Irish spelling. As a word it literally does mean "sign". As a name it is same as Scots Gaelic. The accents go opposite ways because Scots Gaelic used to use the acute accent to indicate stressed syllable. It's rare in Ireland and the only Shena I ever met there told me it was Scottish.

@SionnachRua

I'm all for Irish and Scottish names but this one just makes me think of cos and tan.

Is it pronounced Shee-na, possibly?

Me oo. Log or trig perhaps :-)?

I knew a Sìne, pronounced Sheena.

@LizzieAnt translating this
. Signe (Sine) er dansk form af det gamle nordiske navn Signy, der betyder Sig- ('sejr) -ny ('ny').Navnet Signe er navnet på heltinden i Saxos sagnhistorie

Signe(Sine) is the Danish form of the old Norwich name Signe it means Victory New The name Signe is the name of the heroine in the Saxos legend

Makes me rather like it with that meaning

Grins Norwich was meant to be Nordic my auto correct got involved

And the old Nordic name was Signy as already mentioned up thread

That's brilliant @Enko. Thank you very much.