Mhairi

[Mamma3456]

I know that Mhairi is supposed to be pronounced Var-ree. But does anyone in Scotland pronounce it as Mah-ree?

DH and I are debating which to use. We like the spelling of Mhairi but the pronunciation of Mairi. DH is Scottish and knows a Mhairi who is known as Mah-ree, though he suspects it's because she couldn't be bothered to correct everyone, so I was wondering how common this pronunciation is used?

I do think it might annoy some of DH's Scottish relatives though who are a bit pedantic but don't speak Gaelic.

On a related note, is Mhairi Black known as Var-ree? I was just wondering if there is some well known precedence?

I'm not Scottish but know one who says Varee.

Listened to an audiobook with a main character Mhairi recently and the bloody narrator pronounced it Ma-hairy every single time. Omg drove me up the wall. Why would you not check?!

@PuddingAunt Irish, not Scottish, here but that makes sense for names like Pádraig Sheáin where Seán was the dad (so Seán’s Pádraig in other words). It is the genitive then.

I’ve known a few Rosemarys or Rosemaries who always were Rósmháire in Irish though 🤔 Never thought about it before, but not sure what’s going on there. They weren’t named for any Mary in the family. The herb is named differently. Looked it up and Rósmáire is also used.

It’s quite possible that the genitive form did add to the confusion I’d say.

@Oceangreyscale Oh no!😁🫣

All the Mhairi’s I know pronounce it Vah-ree

those called Marie pronounce that Mah-reg

ans also know a Maire who pronounces it mah-reh

I had a uni friend Mhairi pronounced varee
Fascinating discussion, it had never occurred to me that proper names could depend on case.

I just looked up Mhairi Black, her wiki page has a note explaining pronunciation of the name but that she pronounces it as 'Marry'.

Agreed on Pádraig Sheáin, where it means 'Sean's Padraig'. I admit I've never come across anyone who went by Rosmháire in her daily life, though -- the only couple of times I've come across it, it was that ' we'll invent you an Irish name' stuff that Irish teachers seemed to go in for in the past, and I wouldn't think that was likely to be particularly correct.

I've always known the herb as Ros Mhuire in Irish.

I always thought that name was pronounced Mary or Marie. Why is a name beginning with Mh pronounced as a Va? Not a hope, Op about 99%of pain will spell and pronounce the name wrongly all child's life. That saud, I do like Ma-ree.

Yes, it was only Irish class in school and Irish college that I heard Rósmháire used!😀

So I’m not sure how accurate it was either, never thought about it before. I do know one of their dads was a native speaker, but then it wasn’t used at home I guess.

Rosemary the plant is Rós Mhuire or marós.

Mh is pronounced in Gaelic like a v is in English @Bbq1.

@Bbq1 , Do you struggle with Niamh?

Apart from when it's pronounced 'w'!

(My 12 year old is currently rolling his eyes because I speak Muskerry Irish (I mean, at the Gaeilge scoile level) and his teacher is a Donegal woman. This means we have entirely different pronunciations of 'mh', among other things.

@Bbq1 the gaelic alphabet has a lot less letters (18) the sound ph in english is not pronouced peehuh but more like "F" so the mh in gaelic is pronouced v , dh has a y sound like in ceilidh or Eilidh etc, you can't expect foreign languages to follow English grammar and phonetics

@FranklyMyDears , ah yes, I've heard Siobhan without the V sound but with a W sound.

I only know a Ma-ree and had no idea it was pronounced Va-ree- I also know a Vhairi

And don't get me started on the various different pronunciations of 'mná'...

I only know muh-naw.

Had no idea there were other variations.

https://www.teanglann.ie/en/fuaim/mn%C3%A1

Inexplicably, it's 'mrá' in Connemara Irish. Which despite using Irish on a regular basis during my years working in Galway, I was never able to bring myself to say!

I actually meant mh makes a v sound in Scottish Gaelic @FranklyMyDears, I should have clarified that.
Maybe it’s not always the case in Scottish Gaelic either? I’m not actually sure, should stick to Irish😳

Like mná/mrá, cnoc is mostly said croc in Connacht and Ulster but cnoc in Munster. Don’t know why that is either.

I’m in Scotland and have known both pronunciations for Mhairi - Varry and Marry basically but I’d hate to give my child a name where people only had a 50% chance of getting it right every time.

I asked someone in a university Irish department once, and he said 'Don't get me started.'😀

Love that 😂

With fewer Gaelic speakers about, I think there's less knowledge of Vah-ree being the vocative of Mhairi.

I like Mhairi as Vah-ree.

But if you want the name to sound like Marry then spelling it Mairi will be the best bet.

Mhairi is the vocative case of the name Mairi.

It's pronounced VAR-ee.

The name itself is pronounced MAR-ee.

In Gaelic and Irish (Gaeilge), nouns change spelling and pronunciation according to case -- nominative / accusative (the basic noun), possessive / genitive (when the noun owns something), vocative (when you address a person by their name), and prepositional / dative case (when the noun is positioned).

Nouns come in masculine or feminine form, and are also changed by number.

The name "Mhairi" came about because non Gaelic speakers saw the spelling of the vocative case of Mairi and thought it was cute and quintessentially Scottish. The name itself is Mairi, pronounced MAR-ee. If you were speaking Gaelic and were addressing someone called Mairi, you would start your conversation with "A Mhairi..." ("A VAR-ee..."), using the vocative form to address her.

The same process of ignorant mixing of cases occurred for the name Hamish, which is a transliteration into English of the vocative case of Seumas (Scots Gaelic version of James).

In the vocative case, names that start with any letter apart from L and (iirc) R add an H after the initial consonant, which changes the pronunciation of the consonant. Mh and Bh become V, Sh becomes H, Th becomes H, Gh becomes a very soft G sound where the back of the tongue doesnt quite touch the palate at the back of the mouth, D becomes almost the same sound as Gh but closer to a Y sound, etc...

The proper pronunciation of that MH (and BH) sound in Irish is somewhere between a V and W, a little closer to the W. People whose first language is not Irish don't hear the slight difference between an English V and an Irish MH, and go with the English V. It's unfortunately taught in schools like that a lot of the time.

Same with the Irish F sound, which should be made with lips only. The English F is made with lower lip touching the tip of the upper teeth, which is how most non native speakers of Irish will tend to pronounce the F.

Spoken Irish uses parts /configurations of the mouth that are not used in English; the sounds are similar but not quite the same. People end up with Irish words pronounced with English phonology.

Agree regarding Irish sounds being different, but there isn’t just one sound in Irish represented by bh or mh. It varies depending on position in a word and also with dialect.

The link below has a male speaker with Munster Irish, and a female speaker with Connacht Irish, saying Mháire in a sentence. You can hear the difference, more like an English w in Connacht, more like v in Munster. They are both native speakers and both pronunciations are correct.

Non-native speakers often do get lots of the Irish sounds wrong though, substituting the English sounds as you said.

https://forvo.com/word/inis_do_mh%C3%A1ire_i_gcogar_%C3%A9%2C_is_inseoidh_m%C3%A1ire_don_phobal_%C3%A9./

I wrote it earlier on this thread: the approximate pronunciation of Mhàiri is vaah-thee. The "r" is often pronounced like a soft th when it is not at the beginning of a word.

This is the big problem with this name. Although, like Hamish, it is derived from Gaelic, it is never used as a stand-alone name in Gaelic; it is just the vocative form. As a PP pointed both Hamish and "Vairi" have been adopted into Scots and are used widely among non-Gaelic speakers. At this point the origins become immaterial.

But the spelling now becomes the material point. Hamish isn't a problem, as there is an easy, obvious spelling, known and understood by all, and doesn't bear any resemblance to the original Gaelic spelling, so no complications.

"Vairi" on the other hand is the opposite; there is no one universally obvious and accepted spelling for this sound. It's a name I did a lot of research on and found 18 different spellings starting with V used in Scotland with Vhairi being most popular, closely followed by Vhari.

There have been 13 different spellings of Mhairi used (although no idea if they are pronounced with an M or a V sound). But as there is no consistent non-Gaelic spelling, people tend to stick with the Gaelic spelling Mhairi, which then leads to the M or V question, as well as Gaelic speakers regularly insisting it's not a proper name at all.

I'd stick to Mairi if that's the sound you want.

TLDR:
If you want the M sound OP then suggest you stick to Mairi, as the Mhairi spelling is always going to be a problem until we decide on the correct spelling for "Vairi".