Frank McNally on Britain’s perennial problem with Irish women’s names

The latest published list of words that British people most struggle to pronounce reinforces an extraordinary propensity for Irish women’s names to feature in the top 10.

When last I wrote about this subject, a London newspaper had summarised in a sentence what, based on Google searches, were the UK’s “ten hardest words” to say. It ran as follows:

“Aoife and Siobhan both had Omicron when they went to Kyiv but it didn’t stop their busy schedule – they had to meet Niamh and Saoirse, eat a meal of gyros and acai and attend a seminar about the Nguyen dynasty.”

Well, almost four years later, Omicron has disappeared into pandemic history and out of the list. Similarly absent is Kyiv, which most British people now know how to say.

But “Aoife” and “Saoirse” are still flying high in the ranks of confusion, placing second and third in Google pronunciation searches this year, behind only that perennial mystery for our neighbours: how to pronounce a certain Greek takeaway food.

The inevitable “Niamh” is still well up there too, in fifth. But the big difference since 2023 is that “Siobhán” has fallen out of the top 20. In her place, at No 10, is the new fourth Irish horsewoman of Britain’s phonetic apocalypse, “Caoimhe”.

The helpful surveyors, a word game website called unscramblerer.com, as usual supply guidance on how to say the names, with varying success.

Niamh, they still claim, is pronounced “Neev”, which to most Irish ears is a syllable short of the full thing. Caoimhe, meanwhile, is said to be “Kee-va”, which might be true in the northern half of Ireland, although “Kwee-va” is more common elsewhere.

[ Through a Glass, Berkeley – Frank McNally on eccentric English pronunciationsOpens in new window ]

Why no Irish male names ever seem to feature in these lists is a mystery. Maybe the tendency for 13.3 per cent of our men’s rugby team to be called “Tadhg” explains why English people don’t struggle so much with that one, for example.

In any case, the fact that so many people are at least looking up the pronunciations of Aoife (175,000 searches this year) and Saoirse (163,000) suggests that those and their comrades in the top 10 are engaged in a kind of missionary work in the UK, spreading the word about Irish pronunciation, however slowly.

Perhaps our former colonial overlords will finally crack the code one of these days. On the other hand, considering it was an Aoife MacMurrough whose marriage brought them over here in the first place, and 856 years later they still can’t say her name, it’s hard to be confident.

***

On a related note, in an era of great leaps forward in artificial intelligence, I never cease to be astonished at the incompetence of automated subtitles, especially in sport.

Like its first cousin autocorrect, the subtitle machine appears to be a complete moron, who has never read a book but still manages to be supremely self-confident. On the plus side, its mistakes can sometimes be entertaining.

Watching Sky TV’s highlights of the recent Connacht vs Saracens rugby match, I was struck first by the exuberance of commentator Mark Robson, who although an Ulsterman, got caught up in the excitement of the home team’s performance.

“The west is awake,” he trumpeted after one especially dramatic score, “... awash on a sea of endorphins!” And needless to say, this unexpected turn of phrase, delivered in a trenchant North Down accent, was too much for the subtitler.

Still, it made a gallant attempt at comprehension. Perhaps suspecting a reference to the Connacht back line, numbers 9-15 inclusive, it suggested the west was “awash on seven dolphins”. Which could almost have been an image from a Synge play: Riders to the Sea, perhaps (but with a happier ending).

***

Further to Tuesday’s column about the selection of literary quotations on the walls and railings of the new Kevin Street Garda building in Dublin, a correspondent known to me only as “Ned the Head” has posed a pertinent question.

“Are we justified in issuing a mild rebuke to the gardaí in Kevin Street for having ideas above their station?” he asks.

Well, probably not, Ned. In fairness to the guards, who probably had no say in the architectural flourishes anyway, the quotations are all at ground level. The highest are barely two metres above the footpath.

So even allowing for the abolition of the minimum garda height requirement a generation ago, none of the ideas floated would have much clearance over the head of an average officer, never mind the building itself.

The Bridewell Garda station on Chancery Street, however – now that’s another matter. Along the top of that three-storey edifice is carved the inscription in Latin: “Fiat Justitia Ruat Caelum”, meaning “Let Justice be Done Though the Heavens Fall”.

The phrase has been attributed to the Roman senator (and father-in-law of Julius Caesar), Lucius Calpunius Piso Caesoninus (101BC – 43BC), a man who was probably not known to the gardaí. But if that isn’t an example of having ideas above your station, I don’t know what is.