Aoife or Erin

[LivingLaVidaBabyShower]

We independently have always loved the name Aoife. (I'm irish if it matters)
In our search we also liked Erin.

DH and I agreed not to discuss the names with anyone until we'd definitively picked a name.

When we found out we were having a girl we had pretty much decided on "Aoife Erin Surname"

We rang MIL and told her we were having a girl. After the "Oooh a girl! How nice!" she went on to talk at length about how splendidly nice and spellable the name Erin was and then explain how terrible it is to have a hard to spell name
(DH to date insists he didnt say anything names to anyone )

I then told one of my best friends about this and said asked what the names were and she said she preferred Erin too!!

I always thought Aoife was a beautiful name but am now questioning it as a name

So... Aoife or Erin?

Erin is a brand of instant (packet) soup.
I'd stick with Aoife, it's a beautiful name. Erin has always seemed like a name for Americans wanting to be Irish to me. Not as bad as Quinn or those other names they claim are super traditional, tbf.

@Seriously79

Erin is packet soup? 🤔 what does that mean?

I never know how to pronounce Aoife - not sure that I've even spelt that right.

May be slightly biased as my Dd is Erin.

It was/is a brand of powdered soup in Ireland. Had more of a profile in the 1980s when people were poorer and the food was a bit crappier.

Aoife 100% x

Aoife definitely.

No to Erin, for all the reasons above.

Erin

I love the name Aoife. I hadn’t heard of it until fairly recently and had to think carefully how to spell it for a long time as it didn’t come naturally to me, but it’s well worth a bit of effort.

I prefer Aoife
It's pretty and soft sounding. Erin is harder sounding.

Aoife 100%

@M0rT

I would prefer Aoife because Erin is a cupasoup, but I'm Irish living in Ireland and if an adult couldn't spell Aoife they would be unusual. Are you in the UK? She will probably spend her life spelling it, but I wouldn't have thought ee-fa would be hard to pronounce for non Irish? It's hardly Muireann!

Exactly. Erin is a bad packet soup range , just as Shannon is at least as much airport and industrial zone as river.

Aoife is nice.

Aoife is gorgeous! Unless you pronounce it as the Vicar of Dibley did "his lovely young heifer".

Aoife.

Not Erin. Ever.

When I was pregnant, Aoife was top of DP’s list and Erin was top of mine! DD is called… Niamh!

Definitely Aoife. It is a beautiful name.
I would associate the name Erin with Americans of Irish ancestry picking a name they think is Irish, similar to Shannon and Colleen.

Both pretty names. I do prefer Eefa though, and it’s really not that hard to spell at all.

Choose whichever name you prefer. I am English (and went to school with lots of Irish girls) and have seen the name Aoife before but have absolutely no idea how to pronounce it.

Aoife. Check out the dark greener name graphs, it's not that unusual in the UK. My only reservation with it is that there are so many Ava/Eva/Evie/Edies that it gets a little bit lost. But it is a lovely name (as are Ava, Eva, Evie and Edie!).

Agree about Erin being soup and Oirish. I don't understand it's popularity tbh.

Aoife!!! I’m biased though as it’s DD2’s name. SIL named her DD Erin. I like both but Aoife is better.

DH’s family are all Irish but mine aren’t. Everyone has learned how to say and spell Aoife. Get the occasional mispronunciation but correcting them is fine.

Thank you all for the reassueance and laughs (@CallMeRisley @Leavisite)

"E for Erin" is a no but for any Rupaul fans out there.... dont you think "Aoife Eleganza" would be the best drag name ever?

I feel renewed confidence in our name choice and will pick a new non-E based middle name

Erin for sure. I know an Aoife and she spends most days having to spell and corrently proncunciation of her name. Most people seem to say 'ay-oh-f' or 'oyf'

@LivingLaVidaBabyShower

Thank you all for the reassueance and laughs (@CallMeRisley @Leavisite)

"E for Erin" is a no but for any Rupaul fans out there.... dont you think "Aoife Eleganza" would be the best drag name ever?

I feel renewed confidence in our name choice and will pick a new non-E based middle name

DD2’s middle name is Rae which goes well with our two syllable Irish surname.

Aoife. It's a beautiful name. Good luck, Op.

@ManifestingWisdom

Aoife.

I'm Irish if that matters as you say.

Aoife is classic, folklore, a mythological name.

I don't like Erin. I prefer Aran, like the Island! Erin is not to my taste at all.

Agree with this.

Classic, folklore, mythology - it has a meaning, history and depth - as well as being very sweet.

Also really never come across anyone actually in Ireland called Erin - (which literally means Ireland) - it’s as PP said it’s sort of a name made up by 3rd generation Americans.

@DFOD

That makes feel better. When SIL named her DD Erin, I thought maybe we had made a mistake in naming DD2 Aoife. Should we have given her an ‘easier’ Irish name? I still love Aoife though and she completely suits her name. People struggled at first with spelling and pronunciation but everyone knows it now and so many people spell DD1’s name wrong and hers is an ‘easy’ Irish name.

In Ireland in 2020 "Erin" was the 8th most popular girls' name with 127 babies.
Other spellings included Érin 15, Éirinn 9, Éireann 8, Éire 6, Ériu 5, Eryn 3, Eirin 3, and Éirinn 3.
One of the main characters in the comedy Derry Girls is called Erin. She's from Derry.

Historically Éire was widely used as a name, it gets confused with Ira and Irene. Éireann and Éirinn are genitive and dative/locative forms. In the 19th c most people thought the Irish name for Ireland was Erin and didn't recognise "Éire" - it had to be explained.

Thanks @AuntDympna thats quite interesting. I hadn't realised it was so popular in ireland