Oisín - am I overthinking it?

[Meeko505]

We are due a boy later this year. We live in England, I'm 100% English, my partner is Irish (+ all family are Irish and live in Ireland) but he has an English accent because he grew up here. We do plan to take the baby to Ireland to visit GPs at least once or twice a year.

We like the Irish name Oisín (Ush-een) quite a lot, but I have some concerns that I'd like to check with others:

1. Is it wanky to use a very Irish name like this if only one parent is Irish etc.?
2. I have two older children with a different dad. However, they aren't very close to their Dad and feel more attached to my Irish partner. If we have one or two kids with Irish names, does it create a feeling of two 'separate' sets of kids/could it make my older kids feel less a part of his family as they get older? (Am I just being really paranoid here?)
3. If we go with an Irish name for this baby, I feel quite strongly that a future baby should follow suit. I'm not sure why, tbh. I suppose it might feel like one kid has a more concrete tie to their Irish heritage while the other doesn't?
4. Maybe most obviously, is this name going to be OK in England? Spelling + pronounciation-wise?

The other name I really like is Wilfred, which doesn't have any of these issues but my partner seems to really prefer Oisín.

My daughter has an Oisin in her class and I met one today in my son's football class. We're in England. The school is full now of kids with more unusual names. It's not full of Michaels, Toms, Andys etc like when we were kids. Everyone learns how to say it and spell it - not a big deal at all. I had a common name that is constantly misheard and misspelt - think Kaylie, Kayley, Kayleigh heard as Hayley, Amy etc

It's not so much about not being able to pronounce it as not knowing how when they first see it. Once told, they'll be fine, of course. I've taught an Oisín and it took me all of 5 seconds to be instructed in how to say it before I knew how to pronounce it for the rest of my life. Ditto his 29 classmates. Easy peasy.

I do think you're over-thinking the rest: you are a blended family, so it's fine for this to be reflected in your children's names. Siblings definitely don't have to have matchy-matchy names. It might be a 'thing' in some circles but after 30 years of teaching lots of siblings in British primary schools , I can confidently say that most parents tend to let their children's names reflect what they love, and fidelity to a theme along the lines of heritage isn't really 'up there' with names which are felt to be beautiful or significant in some personal way.

I know three Oisins living in England and they all get on fine.

I love Oisín, one of my favourites, moving up the charts here in Ireland every year, go for it!

But the OP doesn’t live in NI, and doesn’t have to think whether a name codes as Catholic/Protestant.

Just use the fada, OP, if you’re using it. Oisín. Not Oisin.

I would just personally prefer my child to have a name that people couldn’t try and work out their religion from but each to their own. Sectarianism is very much alive and well in NI and parts of Scotland and wouldn’t want it to negatively effect them.

I think if you’re thinking about it this much you’ll very likely continue to be paranoid about it!! Agree the other name is awful though, I’m sorry!!

but what relevance will Scotland or NI have on this child's life??

It is not ush-een. More like osh een. Like gosh with no g.

no.

it depends where in Ireland you live.

ush-een is correct in my part of Ireland.

I have never heard it pronounced ush een in my life and I have lived several places in Ireland.

and I've never heard it pronounced any other way but ush-een.

Few things .. I think it won’t match in with your other children’s names (Oisin is a beautiful name) and the didficulty in pronunciation would make me think differently

wilfred is a million miles from Oisin - awful
my husband wouldn’t totally think I was pisstaking if I mentioned it

Cian, Ronan, Senan - could one of those work ?

A practical reason not to choose this name is that it has a fada (accent) in it. This means that there will be times where a computer system that does not accept accents will not talk to one that has his name with the accent.

This is completely stupid, of course, but I would expect that the US, for example, will still be having trouble accepting accented characters in 50 years from now.

There have actually been problems with this even in Ireland, including a major bank where you couldn't log in if you spelt your name, say, Dara Ó Briain instead of Dara O'Briain.

As a minimum, he and you will have to decide how fussy to be about the fada, when in many cases you will not be able to type it.

(Disclaimer: I have a programming background, so I think about things like this a lot. You could choose to completely ignore this issue and it probably wouldn't come up for a very long time. But it this was a family member, I would strongly advise them against it, partly for my own peace of mind at this "ticking time bomb".)

all sound like ush-een to me

https://forvo.com/word/ois%C3%ADn/

DH has a cousin called Oisin so I was aware of it and how to pronounce it. That branch of the family do live in Ireland.

I really love the name, but would just worry a little if using it in England that they will have to spell it and explain it for people quite a lot.

If you love it then go with it.

Oh! It’s so beautiful. It’s strong but flows. I adore the name. Truly. Stick with it.

It looks on paper like a lovely name, and sounds nice to my ear BUT there was an Oisín in my son's toddler class and literally no-one knew how to say it and it was constantly pronounced wrong. And this is in Glasgow where there is a decent amount of Irish heritage.

So, my other kids actually have accents in their names too - I should probably say that their names both work in English but their Dad is not fully English and their names reflect that too. Think "Théodore" rather than Theodore or that kind of thing. I'm not usually too bothered about leaving the accents off for flight tickets etc. as long as it's on their passports and official documents. Would probably feel the same about Oisín, but would much rather feel I'm spelling it 'properly' with the fada than without it.

Yes, no one is disputing this. My own name couldn’t code me as Catholic any more strongly, but as I spend relatively little time in NI or the relevant bits of Scotland, it’s not an issue. There’s no suggestion that OP’s child has any connection with either, so it seems a bit arbitrary as a concern. My (very ordinary) name apparently also sounds like a rude word in Greek, but I can’t say that keeps me awake at night if I’m in Athens for a conference.

Outside of NI and bits of Scotland these considerations are totally and absolutely (thankfully) irrelevant.

Even in NI they're increasingly irrelevant. We used an Irish name for DC1 with no concerns, and we're not in a Catholic area.

Yes…I’ve even got a few Protestant friends who used Irish names for their kids - 2 x Aoifes and a Ruaidhri!

I do always do a mental calculation when I meet someone else from NI though, and I would assume someone with an Irish name was Catholic, but I wouldn’t do this with an English person. There are millions of English babies called Orla and Maeve atm with no connection to Ireland whatsoever.

I used it as a middle name for one of my boys, DH vetoed it as a first name (we were also living in England at the time). I still absolutely love it as a name but now adult DS hates it - always has - and has never used it for anything. Not sure he could even spell it at this stage tbh! DD on the other hand has one of the more “difficult” Irish names and absolutely loves it. My three have no continuity in their names so I wouldn’t worry about that.

Ush- een is correct in my part of Ireland too