MrsJ is Greek but we ruled out a Greek name for similar reasons.
I've got a pal whose greek and has a name derived from Ancient Greek that even greek people don't know how to pronounce. She has quizzed her dad a few times on why he chose it, as he doesnt seem the type to have chosen something so pointedly unusual. He can't remember 🙂
I’ve got a pal whose greek and has a name derived from Ancient Greek that even greek people don’t know how to pronounce.
My (Greek) FIL was called Paris - no problem with the pronunciation but some confusion as he was an airline pilot.
Mhairi? my mate used to just call her "Meh - hairy" - to wind her up lol.
Learning Irish names is a vital teacher skill. As for Mhari, a notorious landmine. I used the usual pronounciation as a start but did get the odd M. Then I made sure I remembered.
A favourite example elsewhere, was the disgraced (brilliant genius by current standards) Chancellor Norman Lamont. He went for a pretentious mispronunciation of his name, so using the usual version really annoyed him.
Whoever formalised the spelling of Mhairi decided that a V was useless in that language despite there seemingly being a need for it.
Except that when the Latin alphabet was introduced in these islands, ‘v’ was pronounced as ‘w’.