Irish girl's names

[Babygirlname123]

Considering an Irish girls name for our last baby.
We live in the UK, DH is Irish.
Thoughts on the below
Croia (kree-ah)
Clodagh (Cloh-da)
Fiadh (Fia)
Saoirse (Seersha)

Are they too difficult to live with over here in terms of spelling/pronunciation?
I don't really like any other Irish girls names. I kind of like Maeve, Niamh and Aoife but not enough to use them.

Every single time an Irish name thread comes up, you’ll get a few haters raising the insurmountable problem of the doctor’s receptionist or the coffee shop barista or whatever mispronouncing the name.

I’ve never seen it on a thread where people are discussing names from other cultures.

It’s tedious. There are thick people everywhere and ultimately we don’t live our lives pandering to the lowest common denominator in other things. If OP wants to give her child an Irish name then she will be fully aware of possible implications of that without it needing to be pointed out.

And speaking as someone with an unusual Irish name and surname, who spent decades in England and who gave her UK-born child an unusual Irish name and my and DH’s surnames, I was not crushed by dental receptionists mangling it.

@harrietm87 , I’ve never seen it on a thread where people are discussing names from other cultures. I have, and my comments are not regarding Irish names specifically.

the insurmountable problem of the doctor’s receptionist or the coffee shop barista or whatever mispronouncing the name. It means I have to listen carefully to the name being called out because it won't sound like my name.
In a coffee shop, I'd give a false name.

It’s tedious. It's tedious for me when my name is wrong so often. It's a PITA because it gets misspelt on important documents.

If OP wants to give her child an Irish name then she will be fully aware of possible implications of that without it needing to be pointed out. Not necessarily. At least three of my niblings have nicknames (not diminutives) derived from their names that I would not have foreseen.

There are thick people everywhere There are people who struggle with names they aren't familiar with or with names in general. They're not necessarily thick.

OP should give her child the name she wants. I don't see the harm in posters pointing out that a name might be misspelt, mispronounced or mistaken for a different name. OP did ask 'Are they too difficult to live with over here in terms of spelling/pronunciation?'

Well said @NamingNoNames

I agree with all of that.

@NamingNoNames I defy you to find me a thread where someone suggests that a traditionally eg Indian or African name should not be used because of spelling or pronunciation difficulties. People do not do this (rightly) because it would be seen as racist. Yet it is a constant on the Irish name threads.

There are loads of “English” names or names commonly used in England where the spelling is not phonetic according to English spelling rules or where there are multiple alternative spellings - like Phoebe (former) or Catherine (latter) and no one ever makes these kind of comments.

Whatever the reason for the “struggle”, the OP doesn’t have to accommodate people who struggle with names when naming her child as they make up a tiny and insignificant proportion of the people the child will interact with.

Thanks @JustGiveMeReason .

I find the 'you only have to explain it once' and 'nobody will struggle with it' posts tedious.

I was thinking of ordinary names like Catherine, Reuben and Isaac when I pp.

@harrietm87 , I'm not familiar enough with Indian and African names to start looking for threads.
I have seen plenty of threads where the replies are less than complimentary, and the names have been regular names from that culture.

The baby name threads that seem to get nasty tend to be about Irish, Welsh, Hebrew or Arabic names, or threads where someone uses a class/background/behaviour association (naughty boy/stripper/chav/posh/...).

The nastiness is unpleasant, which is why I've tried to not focus my replies on the Irish aspect of the name.
One thing I have noticed about Irish, Scottish and Welsh name threads is that names are suggested are often dated, not from that language/heritage, misspelt, or not the right gender. Any attempt to point out the correct pronunciation will not be well-received or won't make any sense to someone who won't see that a rhotic pronunciation makes a big difference. Saoirse being Seer-sha makes sense if the accent if rhotic. Had I not heard it, I would read it as ˈsiːəːʃə.

Someone correct me if I’m wrong but Croía is made from the Irish word Croí which means “heart” with the addition of the letter a suck on the end isn’t it? Críoa isn’t a word in Irish so it’s a made up name of sorts

Yes, exactly.

It's calling your child Heart-a.

Oh dear.

@NamingNoNames people describing a name as chavvy/stripper etc is irrelevant to the comments about people struggling with spelling and pronunciation. I agree it’s not nice but it has literally nothing to do with my objections on this thread.

I’d put Welsh names in the same category as Irish in that English people seem to think it’s acceptable to demand that Welsh names conform to English ideas.

I would not put Hebrew or Arabic in that category. Again, people do not generally feel that it is acceptable to attack names from those cultures because, again, racist/anti-semitic. By contrast, people are making comments like yours all over every single Irish name thread there is on mumsnet, essentially along the lines that it’s going to be such a burden and inconvenience for the child.

As an Irish person living in England whose children have Irish names, I have (fortunately) never encountered such narrow mindedness in real life.

My child had a name that was not pronounced phoneticallly, and changed it when they got older.

I also have a name that was unusual amongst my peers, and hated it. Possibly I should not have imposed that on my child… I never considered deed polls when I was young. I’m not sure I knew much about them when I was at school.

What is it about English people and Irish names? They seem to manage names from other cultures.
Anyone that matters will learn the name fairly quickly.

My kids go to a multicultural school. They have friends with names I have to think about a little sometimes, but they just accept them as normal names and then we all move on.

On that list OP, I like Clodagh the best. Lots of English words end in silent/soft ghs, surely they would get this one..?

This isn't fair on those who have commented from their own experience. Names like Su Lin, Niam, Lata, for example look readable to an English reader, but they usually read them wrong. I have never seen any of them suggested on this forum and I personally know people with those names who use "known as" alternatives.

@harrietm87 , people describing a name as chavvy/stripper etc is irrelevant to the comments about people struggling with spelling and pronunciation.
They're not but were included as examples of threads that turn nasty.

I’d put Welsh names in the same category as Irish in that English people seem to think it’s acceptable to demand that Welsh names conform to English ideas.
There is overlap in that they are

• languages that the English tried to stamp out
• quite different to the English language in terms of spelling and pronunciation
• languages where some names have become mainstream with the anglicised pronunciation
• nationalities towards which there is some hidden (or otherwise) discrimination

The Hebrew/Arabic threads are different because of the racism/perceived racism element. I've been shot down in flames for suggesting that some names might be misspelt or mispronounced. They were names with sounds you don't get in English.

I don't think having an Irish name will be a burden or an inconvenience, but with some names, I've seen them misspelt on here a lot. This thread has been pretty good spelling-wise.

I'm not narrow-minded. I think you are seeing something that isn't there.

I like the names Sadhbh and Tadhg and if I wanted to use them I would, but if someone asked if they'd be seen as difficult, I would not be expecting to be called narrow-minded for saying they'll be misspelt or mispronounced.

@SomersetBrie I'm not English and I use a 'known as' name. I like my name but there is no consistency in the misspellings and mispronunciations. I've tried using it but gave up after a few years.
The irony is that the very simple 'known as' name gets messed up too (usually a typo).

I meant They're not relevant to the comments about people struggling with spelling and pronunciation but were included as examples of threads that turn nasty.

I live and work in a very multicultural City.
My experience is that most of the names of children from Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi heritage tend to be pretty easy to pronounce, and easy to read when you are looking at a list of people you don't know. as do names from the vast continent that is Africa.
Traditional Irish names however are a mystery to the majority of English eyes.
I say the same about some Welsh names. I am of Welsh heritage and know quite a few people with Welsh names that people really struggle with saying the sounds, even when they hear the person say them. That 'bothers' some people a little bit, and not others, and then there are people that find it a real pain and hate the fact that nobody can ever get their name right.

It is linguistics, not racism.

Hilarious that you can’t see that you think of other cultures’ names primarily in terms of ‘What’s easier for me’ and that this suggests real insularity and Little Englanderism. It’s really not that hard. If of course, you actually want to.

Strange that you can't see that people are talking about their own lived experience.
You have no idea what my forename is.

The OP asked if people reading this thread thought it would be too much of a pain to have a traditional Irish name, particularly one that hasn't been particularly common in recent years, when living outside Ireland.

People (with lived experience) are giving their opinion of how they feel about it.

It will be different for different people (in the same way some people say they like having a really rare name and others hate the lack of anonymity). Some people are not bothered, or even like having a name that others struggle with, and some people hate it. The fact some of us don't like it, doesn't make us 'Little Englanders' or racists or any other insult you want to hurl around. It just makes us people answering the OP's question with our own opinions.