Old Irish girls' names

[AuntDympna]

These are pretty names I found:
Feme - Modern Irish Féimhe (Between Fay-va and Fay-ma, and means "purposeful")
Tethba - Modern Irish is Teafa (Tchaffa or Taffa)
Lallóg (Lallo - a niece of St Patrick)
Lonnóg (Lonno - means blackbird)
Life (Liffa)

I'm not Irish or in Ireland but I'd guess those to be Ferne, Lallog, Lonnog and Life and pronounced how they look

Tethfa would be a straight no from me, because Teth is welsh for teat or nipple

sorry, Tethba. Family in Wales would laugh.

@KirstenBlest

I'm not Irish or in Ireland but I'd guess those to be Ferne, Lallog, Lonnog and Life and pronounced how they look

Tethfa would be a straight no from me, because Teth is welsh for teat or nipple

How would you pronounce Feme or Life in Welsh?

Thanks for the headsup on teth. So definitely best to use Modern Irish spelling Teafa there. I suppose Tchaffa sounds a bit like Taffy which might be a colloquial word for a Welsh person, or like Chavvy which obviously would be a problem, so maybe not a great name.

Agree that Teafa /thetba isnt v nice. I didnt know the the Welsh for nipple but I just dont like it. Lonnóg is lovely! Life would just be pronounced life. Youd be pushing water up hill asking people to pronounce it liffa!

Are you in Ireland? If so whilst uncommon I wouldn't say any are too out there.

However if you're not in Ireland I would anglicanise the spelling where you can or your daughter will have a lifetime of explaining not just how to pronounce her name but to spell it.

Feme - I would just thing Fem and think her Mum must really be a feminist or I would think the french Femme which means woman. Never in a million years would I guess it to be pronounced with a Y.

Tethba - I would pronounce it as it's spelt Tethbah

Lallóg - I would consider La-Lowg because of the accent on the name but again would naturally go Lallog. The same with Lonnog

Life - I would simply pronounce Life.

They all look quite harsh however the pronunciation is beautiful of all of them!

Oh gosh... if I didn't know they were irish, I'd say them as if they were english I suppose but in Welsh they don't really make any sense but the pronunciation is phonetic, with the stress always on the penultimate syllable

Feme - VEHmeh
Tethba - TETH--ba eth like in ethel
Lallóg - Lall-OG - ll is a separate letter in Welsh
Lonnóg (Lonno - means blackbird) - Lon-NOG
Life (Liffa) - LEE-veh

the fada would be interpreted as a stress hence the capitals

If the names had the modern irish spellings I'd sense they were irish and would atte,mpt as follows:

Feme - Femmuh
Tethba -Tehbuh
Lallóg - Lal-og
Lonnóg - Lannog
Life - Liffuh

If you are not in Ireland, they'd probably be a PITA
Someone told me that her friend's baby was called Tiger. He's Tadhgh

I'm Irish and but my Irish is shocking bad.
I wouldn't really know how to go about pronouncing any of those and I've never heard any of them before either. Didn't get much luck on google either.

I've been thinking about the name Clodagh the last day or two.

I'm Irish and have never heard of any of these!
And think the spelling and pronunciation of Feme, Tethba and Life would be problematic even in Ireland tbh, as they look more like they come from English.

OP do you have a link to a website where I could see other old Irish names like these?

If you used the modern Irish spellings I would know how to pronounce them but I don’t think any of them are particularly nice - Lallóg and Lonnóg in particular are very harsh.

Oh gosh yes, these are from ancient texts and are not generally known.
You probably have seen the name Abhainn na Life at some point... It means River Liffey. James Joyce called it "Anna Livia".

I think I have seen Féime, Lalóg and Lonán - very rarely. Teafa is a placename, and I think we have decided it's not a great personal name.

It's a shame they don't teach Old Irish in schools. Even a few lessons, or a short TV series, could be fun and make Modern Irish more interesting.

Interesting names AuntDympna.

I'm not sure that the phonetic English spellings you've given are quite accurate, though of course I don't know how these names used to be pronounced, and they're not commonly used today. For example óg is not pronounced as o in modern Irish (it translates as young and is still used in names sometimes, Seán Óg roughly translating as John Junior, literally young Seán). I don't know how to write it phonetically, but there's a g sound after the ó.

Re Lonnóg - lon dubh (blackbird) is said lun duv, more or less. So the o in Irish is more like an English u than an English o in the word lon. However, the root word in Lonnóg is lonn (which translates as eager, bold) not lon, so maybe the reference in the name isn't to the bird at all? Lonn is pronounced the same as lon in at least some Irish dialects, but maybe not in others (my Irish isn't good enough to be sure I'm afraid.)

forvo.com/word/lonnóg

As I said, this is in modern Irish though, the names could have been said differently in the past.

I quite like Féimhe, which I would say as Fay-va (don't know if there should be an m sound at all?). I also like the sound of Life in Irish, but it would be unusable these days I fear.

Just realised that sounded confusing, talking about English o's etc in relation to the word lon! I'm (very clearly) not an expert in this area, but what I meant is that the sounds represented by the letters are different in Irish than in English. So o in Irish often sounds like a short u in English. The Irish word bog is pronounced the same as the English word bug, for example.

Bug seems to be pronounced like bog in Dublin and maybe southern counties, not sure about Galway.
In Belfast bug is pronounced bug. Big is also pronounced bug. Beg is big.

Feme might be femme, ie it is an m, or it might be mh. It could simply be the French word femme. Or it could be an Irish word pronounced with either m or mh because they weren't consistent. The m nasalises and lengthens the vowel giving féme. Modern Irish adds an i to say the m is slender (those i didn't used to have dots on them, but there is no dotless i on my phone). In Modern Irish Féime would be heard as "feidhme" = "purposeful" that would be a good thing to call a child. You wouldn't want to lose the fada though as feim means tail or seaweed.

I’ve heard of Lallóc/Lalóg because I’m fond of Irish mythology.

I quite like Thethba/Taffa but nn Taffy would be a problem.

When I spoke about the Irish word bog, I meant bog as in the Irish language word for soft AuntDympna. Sorry about the confusion. It's said like this in the various dialects -
www.teanglann.ie/en/fuaim/bog

Yes, if Feme was from French the pronunciation would be different. The modern Irish Féimhe that you gave doesn't have an m sound though (though Féime would as you say). I don't know the name's etymology I'm afraid - maybe it's uncertain, I don't know?

Anyway, I love the old names, thank you.