Oisin / Donnacha / Naoise

[Bewildened]

Which do you prefer?

Irish parents, baby will grow up in London.

@PurpleChrayn , there's a reason for it. This: a lingering, if subtle, undercurrent of anti-Irish sentiment still present in English society.

Anyone criticising a say Nigerian or Indian names would be put in their place immediately, but it's not the case when it's something like an Irish name.

@PurpleChrayn the English enacted laws banning Irish people from speaking their own language as a means of domination and suppression. There’s a bit of history here which Irish people are very familiar with. In that context, telling an Irish person not to use Irish names in order to appease the English is a bit annoying. As pps have said, it wouldn’t be acceptable to tell an Indian, African or Chinese person to use an English name, and Irish is no different.

Enda is basically the patron Saint of Galway. Very much a boys name but I doubt it will be colonised ....sounds too much like End of or Linda for girl mums?
Names ending in A are often taken to be girls names because A is a feminine ending in Latin and thus most Romance languages. But Irish and Welsh are not Romance languages.

Ps Oisín means 'little deer' which is nice I think. No idea what the others mean.

100% agree with you.

The only Naoise I know is a girl, so for that reason I think it sounds too feminine.

Love Donnacha and Oisín, but prefer Oisín slightly! Good name choices.

I’ve always loved Oisin but Donnacha is a close second.

Oisin is my favourite then Donnacha

The OP has explained a bit of the historical context as to why people may not appreciate that commentary but even if you leave aside the unfortunate history, imagine how irritating it would be if anytime a English person asked to choose between Charlotte and Catherine instead of choosing one people said something like “neither, they are both English sounding and we can’t spell them or pronounce them because they are english, please don’t give your child an English name, what a burden to have to live with”. It is just quite boring and repetitive, particularly as the vast majority of English people manage just fine with non English names. If you are in the small minority of English people who are confused and bewildered by non English things…just don’t comment……

I wouldn't take an English pronunciation of an Irish word/name as being valid but yeah, Ulster Irish is quite different to other dialects. I have some friends from donegal who spoke what seemed to be a completely different language to me.

Ah sorry about getting pissy about people criticising our language. How silly of us.

Donnacha is my fave out of the three, it was on my boys list (many years ago now!)

London, allegedly one of the most multi cultural cities in the UK and this is your take?

I love donnacha. Wanted it for ds but dh vetoed it. We went with a different irish name , with silent letters . We live in Ireland and even here people aren't sure of the spelling but spelling a name honestly isn't the end of the world. I have a 5 letter, very common , biblical name and spent the whole time I lived in the UK spelling it for people. It takes 5 seconds, job done.

I absolutely love Oisín (despite the one I dated being a bit Tim Nice But Dim). Not keen on either of the other two, although I wouldn't tell my cousins who have children with those names!

Be careful of names with a fada when living in the UK. GB passports don't have any diacritics and a lot of day to day admin don't include them either (schools, banks etc.). If you have a birth certificate with one spelling and a passport with another you sometimes have to get official verification that it's the same name. It can be a hassle.

I know. Shock, horror. Irish people get pissy at continuing low level racism from English people. It's totally inexplicable.

Caoimhín Kelleher playing for Liverpool will help people learn the name.

Yeah. It’s outrageous of us.

There are hundreds of thousands of Irish people in London, as well as multitudes of people from all over the rest of the world. And apart from that, there are lots of people whose horizons are broad and whose ears work well.

My son's middle name is Oisín, dad is Irish, daughters middle name is Roisín...I would say that every official document doesn't use the fada (just doesn't recognise it) so I end up having to use Oisin and Roisin on their passport, school application, anything official, which is very annoying as I just read them differently then.

All lovely names but I would assume Naoise was for a girl, even though I know a lot of Irish names.

I love them all. Also Irish and living away from home; no issues in 9 years with the Irish names we chose.
I think Donnacha is my favourite.

Surely English people are more intelligent than you give them credit for?

But why pander to stupidity, if that's the problem?

People get names like John and Ann wrong. It's not a problem people naming a baby should feel a need to work around.

I love Oisin. Beautiful name.

I know two little boys with the Welsh version. No issue at all with the use of it.

Ah the fada thing is a good point. I would definitely have used it in Oisín (albeit I didn’t bother to add it in the thread title!).

One of my other DC’s should have a fada in their name (Nobel laureate poet) but I left it out for ease and because people often do with that name (including the namesake I mention), but for some reason I feel more strongly about Oisín having it.

At the moment I think that is my front runner. If it’s a girl she will be Sinead (probably without fada).

Not at all, John is not the only name, but you are likely to be saddling your children with the frequent grind of teaching everyone to spell and pronounce their names everywhere they go forever. If they were growing up in Ireland- no problem. There are lots of Irish names that are lovely and that most people can pronounce. It's your kids who will be stuck with it, not you.

By the way, I'm Welsh and living in Wales but if I was raising my children in England I probably wouldn't called them Angharad or Eluned.