How would you spell Cara?

[Jan2026x]

Would you spell it with out without an accent?

Cárá
Cára
Cara
Cará

@AuntDympna I should add, I’m referring to the teanglann sound clips. I’m not ruling out the fact that other speakers in Ulster may pronounce the words a bit differently (like the example you had of Dineen giving cára for cara in parts of Donegal). So I’m referring to the teanglann pronunciations specifically.

@Lastmoon If you think you hear the pronunciation of the name Cara in the Ulster soundfile for cár on Teanglann, that's great. The point is spelling the name as Cára is not wrong - that's all.

If you're still interested in what I'm hearing, you could listen to nár (exactly what I was expecting to hear based on the spelling), sclár, sár, lár, and I'd love to know what you make of pár.

Late to the party, but as a PP has thrown in Cara as a Welsh name in addition to Irish and Italian, I'm going to add Scottish to the confusion!

In Scotland it's an island name (you know how we love those - Iona, Vaila, Ailsa, etc). Derived from Scottish Gaelic "caraig" meaning friend or dear one, it's spelt with a 'strac' on the first 'a' in Gaelic, i.e. Càra, and without an accent in Scots, i.e. Cara. Historically spelt Caray in Scots before the modern form came about, and was first used a personal name in 1798.

Hope that helps, if you haven't lost the will to live, OP!

Just Cara or Kara.

@AuntDympna Sorry, just getting back to this now.
Re the spelling of the name as Cára — using the fada does make sense now based on Dineen’s observation of a Donegal spelling of the word friend as cára. I’d never seen it spelt like that before (maybe because it rarely is now since the CO?) And I’d never heard the word for friend pronounced the same as the name either, the speakers of Ulster Irish I know say corra. But it obviously is or at least was and I really don’t know that many speakers of Ulster Irish anyway.

So the spelling of the name as Cára was meaningless to me before I knew all that, ie it made sense phonetically in Ulster, but it didn’t mean friend, it didn’t mean anything at all iyswim. So thank you for that extra information.

Mind you, I still think the name an introduced one, which happens to have a happy double meaning,

Addressing the second part of your post,
and again just looking at Ulster, sár and pár are different to nár, but the first two rhyme. Lár can be similar but it depends on the speaker (eg lár vs lár páirce).
Clár sometimes rhymes with sclár (clár oibre) and sometimes with sár (clár bia) all depending on speaker and subdialect I suppose?

I may have officially gone mad now and it’s quite possible I have mixed all those up (but I think I no longer care) 😂