Saoirse for a baby girl in USA

[gleen41]

I’m Irish and my husband is Irish-American, and we both love the name Saoirse.

We live in the US and have had a few “WTF is that name?” reactions, which has made me second guess it a little.

I have an Irish name myself that gets butchered all the time, so I know what that’s like.

Would you use Saoirse in the US? Is the pronunciation/spelling issue enough to put you off?

I really want an Irish name so that they know their heritage especially as I grew up in Ireland, but I don’t want them to constantly have their name butchered

It's a beautiful name, I adore Irish names and wanted Aoife for my daughter but no one could pronounce it when I mentioned it them and as we already have an unusual second name I thought it would just make her life difficult so sadly I opted for something much simpler.

My kids have Welsh names and outside wales people call them all sorts! It’s ridiculous, if I’d have known how hard it is I wouldn’t have chosen these names. Your child will have years of perplexed looks and will have to explain their names! Saying that Saoirse isn’t that unusual now I
in the UK so maybe is ‘normal’ now in the USA?

Love the name Saoirse, I say go for it. Saoirse Ronan has probably helped things as well.
we live in a diverse world so people can be educated on pronunciation.

I know an American ‘Seersha’ for this very reason … not suggesting you do this….

I have a name that was sort-of-common where I was born and then not at all common where I moved and now I wouldn't be surprised if I'm the only one in Scotland. I spend lots and lots and lots of time correcting people and eventually just answering to anything that's reasonably close (my neighbour - have corrected her as many times as I can but just live with it now!). So as long as you aren't precious about people pronouncing it properly then why not? People should keep their history and culture thriving and this is part of it (though I hate, hate, hated it as a child - I like being unique now!)

She hasn't. She says the name differently to how it's pronounced in Gaeilge.

From experience Americans can’t even spell or pronounce Imogen, so I wouldn’t because she is likely to spend her life spelling and correcting people. We were only in the US 4 days and my dd was annoyed, even more so when someone had the cheek to question if it was a genuine name.

Oh and I'm American for what it's worth (immigrated to Scotland 20 years ago) and I have no idea how to pronounce the name properly (though could google it of course and would try hard!). Took me a little while to wrap my head around my daughter's friend Niamh - understood the spelling 'and' the pronunciation but couldn't reconcile them at all!

I don’t think she does actually. The pronunciation she told people on tv (Sursha) isn’t the pronunciation she uses herself. I’m not sure why she did that because it did cause confusion. She did make a distinction in a later interview (see about 4 mins in).
https://share.google/0mafdfCiNYxiIhX24

This is it in case you’re wondering @PurpleThistle7
https://www.teanglann.ie/ga/fuaim/Saoirse

Thanks, and she does, but I saw a previous clip on something else where she said 'Sersha, rhymes with inertia' and I don't normally watch daytime tv.

(the AI-generated sibtitles were funny.😃)

I'm going against the grain and think actually, Americans are, by and large, very good at pronouncing unusual names. There are so many nationalities and cultures that I think they are more used to a variety of names.

As someone with an unusual name who’s lived in the US and the UK, I agree. I’ve found it much easier in the US than in the UK. They also check the spelling of my name more carefully than people in the UK, and are much less likely to automatically use the more common spelling.

But having said that, giving a child an unusual name, wherever they live, will mean they have to spend time explaining it to people, and it’s not something I repeated on my children.

I don't know why Saoirse Ronan told people it rhymes with inertia. Now people abroad are going to say sur-sha because "that's how she said it's pronounced"...

I personally wouldn't use this name if I lived in the USA because I wouldn't want my child to be explaining the spelling/pronunciation of their name constantly. But that's just my point of view. For some people having a name that reflects the family heritage/culture is more important than pronunciation concerns so I don't think there's a right or wrong answer.

It's a great name.

Orla is phonetic and is pronounced as it's spelt ( unless you go Orlaith) ? Maybe an easier Irish option?

I once heard someone mispronounce Saoirse as “seahorse” 🤦‍♀️

It’s a lovely name but don’t saddle your child with a name no one can pronounce or spell . It’s not fair

We have Róisín, Sadhbh, Siún, Sibéal and Siomha in our extended family. They have all managed so far ..,

Lovely name but very popular in Ireland nowadays. Re Saoirse Ronan - I suppose she thought that 'Sursha' is better than most other mispronunciations.

Well it’s Oar-la where I am, but Or-la (like the first syllable of orca) in other parts of Ireland so it does vary a bit I think.

(As OP is in the US the r will be pronounced, but it does cause some issues for non-rhotic accents elsewhere, eg most English accents, and ends up as O-la or Aw-la.)

Apart from the fact that your child would have to either spend its life correcting people (it gets really tiresome after the first 30 years) or change its name to something easier, saoirse is a loaded word. When I first heard the name I assumed Saoirse's parents were ardent Irish republicans who wanted their child's name to reflect that.

Where I am (Munster) it means nothing of the sort 🤷‍♀️

I have listened to the link so I know how to say it now but my best guess at pronunciation would have been "Saucy" before that.

Most Americans would pronounce the letter r in Saoirse, so it’s unlikely they’d come up with Saucy anyway ☺️