Using an Irish baby name

[Peony123]

DH & I have chosen Aiofe for DC1 (if it turns out to be a girl).

I foolishly told my mother who is Irish. She really objects as the baby will only be 1/4 Irish and she thinks that having a name which can't be easily pronounced/spelt is a burden (this is her experience of having an Irish name).

DH's name is a mainstream Irish name and he likes it - he isn't at all Irish.

One of my friends is Irish and has a difficult to spell name but says go for it.

My experience of non-Irish people having Irish names has been as a teacher and they were disproportionately poorly behaved and I am not sure if there is a stereotype of them being chavvy (I am really not trying to offend anyone with this).

Obviously there are plenty of other nice names out there which we could pick from... Any thoughts?

oooh, you can listen here

Honeywitch, funny you should say that Aisling is a "dreamy" kind of name - that's one of its meanings! That, or 'beautiful vision'.

It's one of my favourite names - I thought about suggesting the Cork variation of it (Aisleain) if I had a daughter but my wife vetoed it, since it was the name of an ex of mine...fair enough I suppose!

Aoife is much higher profile as a result of that girl from one of the AL Webber shows.

Like you I'm very anti people giving their kids names which pretend to an ethnicity which they do not in fact possess, but if they're entitled to play for Ireland under the grandparent rule then feel free. In fact I've given the kids very non-English middle names despite the fact that they wouldn't (quite) squeak in under the grandparent rules.

I am not irish and my ds is called aidan that name has been slated on here but I dont care and im not a chav. Go for it lovely name.

Which Irish names would be consider a bit chavvy in Britain? Aidan would be a bit posh here in the north of Ireland, for example.

DS has an Irish name although we are Welsh and English and we live in England. DH's mum's family was Irish originally, but to be honest we named DS after an Irish-Canadian friend and because we liked it. Poor lad will have to spell it out forever though.

If you love a name go for it.

There was a thread ages ago and it realy slated the name Aidan, we love it though.

mathanxiety - you're probably right, my mum definitely felt discriminated against and couldn't hide her Irishness due to her name. I think that being Irish became "trendy" in the 90's with the Cranberries and the Celtic Tiger, so I have a different perspective to her.

DilysPrice - I didn't know about the Aoife on the Lloyd Webber show and I can easily imagine that we will be giving DC an unusual name only to find her not being unique in her class at school.

I wanted to name DD Aoife (her great grandmother on DH's side is Irish and we have a very Irish surname) but DH vetoed it - even for a middle name .

We ended up naming her Catherine which I also live but she'll still have to spell for people although I guess we've avoided the pronounciation issue.

Still feel a bit sad when I think about it though. It's a very, very beautiful name and I wish we could have used it somehow.

Go for it

Cliona is a lovely name if I may say so myself.

Cliona is a lovely name if I may say so myself!

Can also be spelt Clíodhna, if you really want to confuse people with the spelling!

Where do you put the fada? I have never seen Orla with a fada? Am trying to pronounce it with one

is it Aúrla- thebutterflyeffect?

i also love aidan/aiden/aden/aodhan but wouldn't consider it posh here in nortehrn ireland.

My dd2 is Roisin- I can't do the accents on my keyboard, but I think Aoife is lovely too.

PilgrimSoul -- Orla has no fada. It doesn't have one because the O is long anyway as it precedes RL. (Any vowel before RD, RL, RN and RR is normally lengthened and needs no fada)

think it's a bit of a daft notion that non-irish people shouldn't have an irish name!

i am irish and i, along with half of the country, do not have an irish name.

one of my friends has two children - one has an irish name and one has a very traditional english name. neither she nor her husband have any english connections.

choose whatever name you like.

me and dh are both irish, live in Ireland and have Irish names. Some people still mispronounce them or spell them wrong, so doesn't matter where you live!! I'm kind of tempted to give our baby a Welsh name when it arrives tho lol Just to be confusing!!

Other versions of Aoife like Eva and Ava are also nice...

I worked with a lovely Australian girl once, who used to come over to me and whisper frantically "how do you pronounce that?" when given a file for an Aoife or a Caoimhe"

Have to say the tables have been turned for me now when confronted with a file with an impossibly long African name but I am getting there!

To be honest, one of the reasons I don't like Irish names becoming popular in England is because they seem to very quickly gain a 'chavvy' reputation. For instance, Conor, Tonan, Liam and Kevin are very ordinary, traditional middle class names in Ireland, I gave one of these names to ds and then realised it was considered really common over here.