Irish ladies pls how do you pronouce this girl's name?

[choolie]

My cousin has just named her baby girl Labhaolse. Can anybody re-write this as you would say it, so I know how to pronounce this?

I apologise on behalf of my mum who does not like it just because she can't say it - I did swiftly tell her it's probably a very pretty name if only we could pronounce it and would love to ring her back and tell her how it sounds.

TIA!

[Klaw]

So Skidoodle, does Frank not pronounce the names correctly?



Oh well, what's done is done! Dp and I were both born elsewhere but have lived most of our lives in Scotland and we love it so we wanted a celtic name for dd

[skidoodle]

LOL @ choolie's mum

I really love Welsh names, but I'm steering well clear of them for my baby because I don't know how to pronounce them properly and would hate to one day be in Wales and have people laughing at us because we were calling our baby the equivalent of LAB-HOSE or whatever.

BTW Aoibheal is a girls' name. For the many of you thinking of using it for a lovely little daughter .

[Beauregard]

lol skidoodle at Evil

[MrsEi25]

lol skidoodle that one goes hand in hand with damien ala the omen might have been a more fitting choice come to think of it
xx ei xx

[choolie]

ahh, thanks all - and some lovely names in there too just rang mum back, "ah that's a lovely name" she said "why is it spelt like that though, nobody will know how to say it?" - at this stage, i should point out that we're welsh?!? - she may be my mum and I love her dearly, but does she really think non-welsh people can pronounce some of our names???

[Beauregard]

Yes it was the different spelling confused me ,thanks

[skidoodle]

@Pelvicfloor sorry, didn't mean to be brusque. Some people don't realise that Irish has entirely different spelling than English. In fact some (even in England ) don't realise it's a separate language.

But Irish pronunciation is more uniform than that of English (where spelling and pronunciation really do part ways quite often).

So the combination AOI is pronounced EE
BH or MH are pronounced either V or W in the middle of a word, although at the end of a word in some accents this could change to A or U

Imagine my delight when I saw in a book of Irish names:

AOIBHEAL

sound it out using my guide above...

You get the weirdest suggestions in name books sometimes. I've no idea whether this is a real name or not, I've certainly never heard of anyone called that.

[skidoodle]

ha ha, Jaysus there's some weird pronunciations on that Frank McCourt site.

I love the idea of all these English kids going around with names pronounced in a Limerick accent

LOL @ weeonion's doctor, I guess it makes sense in some ways.

my DH is English so if we want to choose Irish names I have to try to stick to ones his family will be at least able to pronounce, even if they will find the spelling weird.

[Beauregard]

Yes skidoodle forgive my ignorance.

[skidoodle]

Pelvicfloor - they are pronounced that way because they're in Irish.

[ChasingSquirrels]

weeonion just had a double take at that as my friend has an 8mo called Caoimhe! Pretty sure she isn't you though as it is her 4th.

[Klaw]

You can check pronounciation here as Frank McCourt says the names.

Mind you, it doesn't seem to have Labhaoise...

Used the site to check how to say dd's lovely name

[skidoodle]

Aleanbh - that's a weird one. It's normally spelt (and pronounced) Alanna, which you may be familiar with.

Aleanbh is like a re-Irishing of an anglicised version of a Irish phrase (a leanbh - child [vocative]).

a leanbh would be pronounced any of A LYANIV, A LANOO, A LANA.

as a phrase (pronounced Alanna) of endearment for children (or even grown ups by their elders) it passed into general English usage, even in non-Irish speaking communities. It then began to be used as a name.

So my guess is that a baby with the name Aleanbh would pronounce it Alanna but I would pronounce that combination of letters as ALYANIV just from how its written iyswim.

[MrsEi25]

i read an autobiography a while back where the lady called one of her DCs saoirse which i had terrible trouble tryin to work out how it is pronounced and then i watched a programme with said lady i it and she said the name as seer-sha beautiful name but i would never be able to use it as my family have trouble spelling DDs name (sian) she gets all kinds like sharn and sain etc
xx ei xx

[weeonion]

the doctors reception calls out "coal-ham-he" for caoimhe. it still makes me giggle!

[Whizzz]

Mrs F : Aleanbh is apparently a Gaelic form of Alannah - 'a leanbh' means 'O child

[Beauregard]

An aquaintance of mine has just given her newborn dd Aoife as a middle name so i thought i best check

[Whizzz]

there's a list here

[skidoodle]

Aoife is probably a much older name than Eva, I wouldn't trust Google on that one. People are always making up unfounded links between Irish names and English names that sound a bit similar.

Aoife was also the name of the evil stepmother in the Children of Lir iirc, although it's a beautiful name so that shouldn't put you off.

[Beauregard]

Thankyou

Still don't get how they get to be pronounced in that way?

[MrsFogi]

thread hijack alert - what about Aleanbh, how would that be pronounced?

[Whizzz]

caoimhe - qwee-vuh or key-vuh Keva From the Irish word 'caomh' which can variously mean 'gentle, beautiful or graceful'

They are lovely names but I wouldn't have a clue how to say any of them !

[lucy5]

I was just going to ask the same question pelvicfloor... as I saw the name somewhere yesterday.

I remember when Bananarama first came out, thinking that the girl was called Sio-bahn. I thought it was a lovely name and felt like a right twit when someone told me the correct pronunciation. I was only 11 though.

[MrsEi25]

PFNM its pronounced ee-fah as far as i know. i worked with a girl with this name (same spelling) and thats how she pronounced her name
xx ei xx

[mollythetortoise]

pelvic, think Aoife is pronounced Eee-fa