How do you pronounce Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin ? I suppose the last bit is what we would spell Sullivan, but the rest?

Must be a nightmare telling her name to some customer service numpty on the phone 🙁

eeveen nee sool awaan

Remember packs of letraset and all the stray consonants and accents that would be left over – guess where they all went.

jacksonwwirl nearly has it, but the “Ní” puts an “h” after the S in Suilleabháin, meaning it’s now pronounced “hool-a-woyn” rather than “sool-a-woyn”.

The “Ní” is a shortening of “iníon” which means “daughter” and is how most female names and surnames are pronounced in Gaelic. Whereas her brother would be Seán O’ Suilleabháin.

wha ??

wha ??

❓

gaibh mo leithsceal! darcy . the wha was aimed at the letraset comment

Remember packs of letraset and all the stray consonants and accents that would be left over – guess where they all went.

🙂

There is only one accent left in Gaelic now mccruiskeen (the one above) known as a fada (literal meaning: long). It can be applied to all vowels making a (cat) aw, e (get) ey (grey), i (git) ee, o (uh) oh, and u (uh also) oo as in fool.

There is also no j,k,q,v,w,x,y or z. We have all those sounds but usually made by combining other consonants (usually consonant-h) to create the sound. It’s all a bit devilishly difficult really.

EDIT: jacksonwwirl’s post above demonstrates one, bh = v (but confusingly enough can be w as well). It’s the Gaelic for “excuse me” and should be pronounced “guv muh leshkale”.

how do you write a fada on an iphone?

Press the vowel and keep your finger on it. Brings up all accented versions. Works for lots of other letters too. Don’t think I realised that till my second iPhone. Was a bit of a relief, given that I have an á in my name.

The “Ní” is a shortening of “iníon” which means “daughter” and is how most female names and surnames are pronounced in Gaelic. Whereas her brother would be Seán O’ Suilleabháin.

That’s very much like the use of neé in English, when referring to a married woman and referencing her maiden name, as in Martha Henderson, neé Jones, (I think that’s how it’s spelt, anyway; probably has a common root word from pre-Anglo-Saxon British).
I bought an English-Irish dictionary a while back, because I was very interested in how Irish Gaelic was structured.
I thought my head would explode! Bloody hell, it’s complicated.
Beautiful language, though.

So is it deádlydarcy or deadlydárcy and how is it pronounced?

🙂

The á is in my first name.

The Gaelic for my surname is Ó Dorchaí.

That’s very much like the use of neé in English, when referring to a married woman and referencing her maiden name, as in Martha Henderson, neé Jones, (I think that’s how it’s spelt, anyway; probably has a common root word from pre-Anglo-Saxon British)

N?e is French for “born” I.e. The name she was born with.

There is only one accent left in Gaelic now mccruiskeen

Well letraset is a finite resource and should be used responsibly. We’ve passed peak umlaut and all inflections will now fall into rapid decline. By 2025 its thought we’ll all sound like we come from Hull.

Indeed, I think DrJ may be correct on that one CZ. Iníon (in-EE-on) is specifically the word for daughter, mac being the word for “son”, hence the prevalence of surnames beginning with Mac/Mc, common in Ireland, but very common in Scots Gaelic.

Then of course, there is Fitz…which can be traced back to the French fils for son. But it’s use in the surnames Fitzpatrick and Fitzgerald (or hey, is it FitzPatrick or FitzGerald) is one example of mega-convoluted differences in Gaelic surname origins.

I’m also not sure there’s a common root in pre-Anglo-Saxon British either. Irish Gaelic is thought to date from around thousand-ishBC when the first Celtic settlers arrived on the island, evolving into ancient Gaelic, then splitting into Scots and Manx after they got bored of fighting amongst themselves and headed back East for a bit of pillaging, and hung around for a while.

Europe’s oldest literature written in the tongue of the people is that of the earliest Irish writers.

I spoke Irish fluently when I was younger, as did my mum and sister (but never as a first tongue) which is great but I’m still glad that the British and Normans left us with English as our “first” language when they finally left. 🙂