Pronunciation of Irish Names

The name Siobhán is a perfect illustration of many of the baffling rules of Irish pronunciation:

S is pronounced SH before E or I: think of Sean (pronounced Shawn).
SH, however, is pronounced H, as is TH. . . .
BH and MH are pronounced like a V. Or, once in a while, W.
DH, FH, and GH are usually silent. Completely. The name Laoghaire, for instance, is pronounced Leary. Except the GH in Donoghue is pronounced like a Y. Yikes!
CH is the only combination that makes some sense in terms of English pronunciation: it sounds like a guttural K, as in Bach.
C and G are always hard, as in came and game.
A is pronounced like the short O in pot; E is short as in pet, except when it comes before A, when it's silent; I is usually pronounced with a long E sound as in feed; O like the short U in put.

Accent marks, however, completely change the pronunciation of vowels: Á is pronounced AW as in pawn (or Siobhán), É like the long A in pay, and Ó and Ú--hallelulah!--like the long O (potent) and OO (fooey).

Of course, there are many names that don't follow the usual rules. See the table below for some specific names and their pronunciation.

This word 			is pronounced
Aedh				Ae (rhyming to "day").
Aoife				Eefa
Badb				Bibe (as "jibe")
Bodb				Bove
Cliodna  			Cleevna
Cobthach			Cowhach
Conchubar			Conachoor
Cuailgne			Cooley
Cuchulain*			Cuhoolin, or Cu-hullin
Dun Sobairce			Dom Severka
Emain				Avvin
Eochaid 			Yohee
Eocho				Yoocha
Eoghan  			Owen
Fernmaighe			Farney
Glen na (m) Bodhar		Glen na Mower (as in "Bower")
Inbhir				Inver
Lugh				Loo
Magh Tuireadh   		Moytirra
Muirthemne			Mur-hev-na
Niamh				Nee-av
Rudraige 			Rury
Sidhe 				Shee
Slieve Suidhe Laighen   	Slieve see lihon
Suibnes 			Sivness
Teamhair 			T'yower
Tuathmumain     		Too-moon

From Beyond Shannon & Sean: An Enlightened Guide to Irish Baby Naming, by Linda Rosenkrantz & Pamela Redmond Satran, St. Martin's 1992.

* On the matter of Cuchulain, let me pass along this correspondence:

Hello, Glenn - can you please tell me how to pronounce Cuchulain? I thought maybe it was the same as "Cullen"? Have read about this character many times but was never sure... Thanx. Gloria Packard gpackard@brobeck.com

Gloria: It happens that I have just read the definitive word on this pronunciation. From Richard Finneran's notes to The Poems of WB Yeats: A New Edition:
Yeats explained that 'Cuchullin (pronounced CuHOOlin) was the great warrior of the Conorian cycle.' . . . The correct pronunciation of Cuchulain is Koo-hullin; Yeats is pronouncing a long vowel as short and a short vowel as long. 'Conor' is an anglicization of a modern pronunciation of Conchubar (620).
Meself, I follow Yeats's pronunciation, since it's the one my Irish lit professors used. Glenn.

See also this Index of proper names archived at Emory.

Go back to the UTM English page; to Everett's English page; to the Irish Lit page