I was looking at a list of the top 60 female and top 60 male names in Ireland for 2008(?)and made the following observations:


About 22% of the female names were in the Irish language form and the same %age for the males. In addition the males had another 16% of anglicized Irish and, in one case Welsh, names.

There were 13 female names; Aoife, Ciara, Caoimhe, Niamh, Róisín, Aisling, Saoirse, Áine, Caitlín, Eimear, Órla, Aoinhinn, and the Welsh Megan.

The male names: Seán, Cian, Oisín, Eoin, Cillian, Liam, Ciarán, Cathal, Fionn, Cormac, Rónán, Eoghan, Brian and the Welsh Dylan. In addition the anglicized Conor, Darragh, Shane, Rory, Kevin, Calum, and the Welsh Evan.

The rest of the names fell into a couple of groups: one was the traditional English forms of saints name used in Ireland. This group made up 28% of the males but only 10% of female names, e.g. Grace, Lucy, Hannah, Anna, Ellen, Mary).
A noticeable trend seems to use American-style names for both. Some of these names sound quite informal: Katie, Ellie; Jamie, Jake, Charlie.
Other names sound like the Old Testament: Sarah, Leah, Rachel, Rebecca; Adam, Aaron, Joshua etc.). The boys have two example of faux Irish IMHO: Ryan and Kyle. The girls have more: Erin, Tara, Shauna, Katelyn, Shannon, Kayleigh, Alannah. My impression was that Ireland has several naming trends but almost a quarter still value the Gaeilge as far as naming.

quote:

My impression was that Ireland has several naming trends but almost a quarter still value the Gaeilge as far as naming.

In fact, it is part of an ongoing resurgence. Up to thirty years ago everybody was called Mick, Dick, George, John, Tom, Jim, Mary, Anne, Patricia, Helen, Peggy, Nora - not forgetting Uncle Paš and Auntie Kašy.

Ryan

Isn't 'Ryan' taken from Gaeilge via "Riain"? :/

If not, I'm crushed. :(

Don't be crushed, it's all Ryan, the one Ryan.

If you ever want to feast your eyes on Ryans you might do worse than head in the direction of Tipperary North Riding some day. And if you manage to find someone there who doesn't happen to be called Ryan, he'll probably be called Tracey.

I'm surprised Sinéad and Siobhán didn't make that list.

If anything, there's not enough VARIETY in names amongst Irish born people. Seems like every other girl out there is named Aoife or Cíara or Níamh. Still, good to see a lot of Irish names.

Could be worse, Danny. We're Maltese on my mum's side...if your name isn't Joseph or Paul (or their variants, or their female equivalents), chances are you're not Maltese... :)

I'm surprised about Sinéad and Siobhán too - I know a couple of Sinéad's here in Australia...though admittedly one of them goes by 'Shinead' because her parents didn't think people in rural New South Wales would 'get' her name! :p

I believe the use of Ryan as a first name was an American phenomenon. I don't believe Ryan (Rian) was used as a given name before the present day in Ireland. It is, of course, an Irish surname, originally Ó Maoilriain.

Come to see Spain and you will understand that Ireland has much variety in names!!
Thank God for a mixed heritage of Gael,Saxon and now American! ;)
Come on Beyoncé do yer homework!
We put a name popular in the US which comes from an Irish song Alanna..a leanbh mo chroí...thankfully the Spanish can pronounce it..my name is beyond them-every letter has to be pronounced!! even Liam is a hard one for them to pronounce!

While the tradition of naming children after parents/grandparents/uncles/aunts may not be as strong as it used it be in the past for the primary given name, I think it is stil quite common in Ireland to incorprate a relative's name as a secondary forename.

We named our daughters Ciara Ann (Ann being her maternal grandmother, Niamh Marie (Mary being her mothers name) and Caitríona Ellen (paternal grandmother)

Diarmo,
Couldn't disagree more. How does the large scale adoption of American-style names help the Irish culture? It dosn't. It's just the latest version of more anglicization; this time from the west rather than the east. I'm surprised to hear someone who favors the preservation of Irish making such a statement especially on Daltaí.
This topic was covered a while back in discussions abou "most cringeworthy" names where the Americanization of Irish names was the subject.
Additionally, i can't understand why a Spanish speaker couldn't pronounced Irish. The both have the same values for the vowels: á/a, é/e, í/i, ó/o and ú/u. The medial D sounds a lot like broad Irish D. I imagined that the Wild Geese probably picked up Spanish more easily than English. How would a Spanish speaker pronounce

LÍAM?

I´m not for names such as Beyonce, Kylie and the like but you can´t deny the Irishness of names such as Shannon,Ryan,Alanna etc..obviously people should choose more authentic names but people are not always aware of the range available...Spaniards are just too lazy to pronounce the name properly;they say my name dee-ar-mweed or dee ar mun.. after much explaining most of my colleagues dont get a fixation on pronouncing every vowel and pronounce it correctly! Liam is pronounced by many like Lee-an when seen at first!!..lazy people!

OK, a Dhiarmuda/Dhiarmada,
Shannon, Ryan, Allanah are not natively used in Ireland but are the result of American cultural influence. Agreed or not agreed?
I noticed you did not respond to my argument that native Gaeilgeoirí would have acquired Spanish more easily than 'Béarla'? Are there any speakers of Spanish AND Irish who would like to weigh in on this one? If so, "Tá fáilte romhaibh".

I speak both, and I'm also called Liam.

I can confirm that most Spaniards would pronounce my name as Lee-an. The Spanish have a lot of difficulty pronouncing an 'm' at the end of a word. So much so, that when David Beckham was playing in Madrid, his surname was pronounced as Bec-an.

"Additionally, I can't understand why a Spanish speaker couldn't pronounce Irish."

1. They both have the same Continental values for the vowels.
2. The medial D sounds a lot like broad Irish D.
3. The "g" in "agua" sounds like broad GH/DH to me.
4. There are two forms of "to be"

"I would imagine that the "Wild Geese" in Spain (or any other Gaeilgeoir) could pick up Spanish more easily than English." True or false? This would be more interesting than how Spaniards cannot pronounce a final -m.

Braitheann sé!

Tumadh na Géanna Fiáine in san iliomad teanga, ach bhíodar i mbuíonta Gaelacha cuid mhór den am.

Ní dóigh liom go bhfuil teanagacha thar a chéile níos deacra le foghlaim - braitheann sé ar an deis, agus an modh.

I know an Irish girl who used to teach Irish in Galicia..her students now speak some sort of Irish and have gone to Aran and other places (without knowing English supposedly!)..does that answer your question Tadhg?! Depends on a good teacher..explaining the way words are not pronounced as they are written and then all the exceptions to the rules would throw them a lot..they arent strong at languages (unlike the Irish har har!)

Wouldnt the Wildgeese have had many bilingual Irish/English speakers?? and many Latin speakers? any evidence of this?

Keep in mind that language learning is not transitive. Just because a speaker of language X has an easy time learning language Y, it doesn't follow that the converse is true.

Case in point: All things being equal, Irish-speakers would probably have an easier time learning to pronounce (there's a lot more to learning a language then just knowing how to say the words!) Spanish than English since Spanish has fewer phonemic distinctions than Irish or English. That is to say, there are a lot of Irish sounds that aren't found in Spanish, but there aren't really any Spanish sounds that aren't found in Irish.

But, for this very same reason, Spanish-speakers will have trouble going the other way. They don't have a broad-slender distinction in the consonants, they have less than half the number of distinctive vowels, they allow a limited number of consonants in final position (i.e. /l/, /n/, /r/, /d/, /s/, /θ/, /x/), etc.

quote:

Ní dóigh liom go bhfuil teanagacha thar a chéile níos deacra le foghlaim - braitheann sé ar an deis, agus an modh.

I think Europeans get that idea because European languages are so alike, but some languages simply have fewer phonemes and much more regular grammar and expressions, while others have more exceptions than rules. Grammatically, languages with no gender, no singular/plural distinction, and no case are much easier than those which make lots of such arbitrary distinctions. Russian looks pretty difficult; Indonesian/Malaysian is probably one of the easiest.

All languages may be equally easy with immersion, but whether they can be tackled by foreigners learning overseas is a better test. Irish is definitely an uphill climb for foreigners.

I guarantee that Japanese is much harder than any other language I have seen so far. It is deceptively easy to learn to speak at first because it has fewer phonemes and fairly regular grammar. However, it makes up for that with convoluted honorifics and a writing system that mixes four different sets of characters (kanji, katakana, hiragana, and romaji). Some of those characters are phonetic but most of them are ideographic, making it the _least_ phonetic of any writing system in the world. Even the Japanese forget how to write their own language after a few weeks overseas!

Amongst the languages I have learned, Irish only ranks number two for difficulty. Why is it difficult though? Because even the exceptions seem to have exceptions. ;-)


Getting back to the main thrust of this thread. We named our first daughter Aisling and our second will be called Caoimhe, because my wife and I both love Ireland and Irish music. These names have the added advantage of being equally _difficult_ to pronounce and spell for both sides of our family. If we had opted for names pronounceable by both sides, our choices would have been severely limited - a handful of names like Meg and Ken. :P

Ta seo an simiuil. I do a lot of freeform pretends and my main charactors are always Irish with correctly spelled non-Anglicized names. So far I have Brid, Caitlin and Noiri, short for Nora. I now that that should technically be Noirin but she just is a Noiri and not a Noirin and I can't do anything about it now. :) For games that happen in a more fantasyish setting I alter Irish names sometimes. Does anyone know of a good place to find Irish names, besides namenerds? I know lots but I can always use more. And I do pronounce Caitlin correctly, if someone wants to be named Katelyn they should spell it like and not like the real Irish name Caitlin.

Beir bua agus beannacht

quote:

correctly spelled non-Anglicized names...Brid, Caitlin and Noiri

Ní haon ainm acu atá litrithe go ceart. Cá bhfuil na síneaidh fada?

Níl a fhios agam cén fáth ach níl Ríona in ann na síntí fada a scríobh.

Recte: Nóirín (in áit Noiri)

(Message edited by dennis on January 21, 2009)

Ríona,
There are a lot of "baby-name" sites on the web, some deal with specifically Irish names. One site is babynamesofireland which although listing clearly American fabrications does include some actual Irish names. The site (run by a Irish-born person) also tries to give phonetic English versions. This would be fine if we all spoke the same dialect of English. The only accurate to represent the sounds would be the IPA.
It would be nice if someone with a knowledge of Gaeilge (or Gàidhlig) could set up a site for authentic Irish names. (Daltaí, b'fhéidir?) People might select an authentically Irish name if they knew where to look and could trust the info.
Fr. Patrick Woulfe's book is rather outdated now and the best source I could recommend is "Gaelic Personal Names" (Ó Corráin & Maguire).
Check out babynameofireland and see what you think I'd be interested in the reactions of Lucht na Gaeilge.

GRMa a chairde. I know those names need fadas to be right but I have to use speech software to read stuff on the computer and setting up fadas would screw up the speech software because it uses keyboard commands instead of the mouse and it has very specific key commands I need to use to navigate on the Internet, are ya all satisfied now? :) Never bothered to explain before, too complicated. But now I expect no one will bother me about fadas again, I do know they're important but ...

Beir bua agus beannacht

Oh, I think I'll look at that site and see what they have. I know Brid has a fada on the i and Caitlin has a fada on the last i and Noiri has a fada on the o, I know these things.