Anonymous wrote:I am surprised by all the people who have never heard this before. I am not particularly Irish and I hadn't heard of the actress before, but I'm familiar with the name and know how it's pronounced. If you are Irish and it has some meaning for you, go for it, and people will get used to it. I think it must be becoming more popular already. If you aren't irish, I would give you serious side eye for using such an ethnic name. But I think it's beatiful and hope you go for it!

People might get used to it, but can you imagine what she'll have to go through every time she has to place an order with a Home Depot on the phone, call an insurance agent, have to hear her name butchered every single time in the Dr's waiting room?

Anonymous wrote:Watch this starting at 1:55. Even the actress Saoirse says her name is a ridiculous name.

Well hell, she says it's SIR-sha. Rhymes with inertia. Not SEER-sha.

Anonymous wrote:It's a beautiful name. I'm a teacher and have learned to pronounce many names, including Indian names with many letters: Shinidi, Abdullazi, etc. I had an Eoin one year too. It'll get butchered at times but once she introduces herself, people will get it.

Looking at Abdullazi takes me about a half second to figure out how to pronounce, maybe butchering which syllable to accent.

Saorise is NOT pronounced phonetically in our language.

Unless you're Irish, or using Grandma's name, it seems so pretentious to use a name that most Americans won't be able to read.

One other thing. It's hard enough explaining to my preschooler that the 'F' sound in his last name is not an F, but a ph. I want to just laugh at the though of trying to explain to a child, who is so earnestly trying to learn their letters, that NONE of the letters in her name sound remotely like the letter sounds she's learned, after the S.

In the US it will be mispronounced/misspelled constantly, as lovely as it is. Use it as a middle name.

They will be correcting people their entire life. Why do that to a child? - someone who has to correct people's pronunciation of my name

This is a really pretty name that I am familiar with and know how to pronounce but it will be constantly mispronounced.

To each his own. I love it.

Anonymous wrote:http://m.imdb.com/title/tt01865505/

This is a beautiful animated movie...watch it and you will DEFINITELY want to name your daughter Saoirse.

Song of the Sea

Nope.

http://m.imdb.com/title/tt01865505/

This is a beautiful animated movie...watch it and you will DEFINITELY want to name your daughter Saoirse.

Song of the Sea

And its, really beautiful by the way.

Sair-shuh is the correct pronunciation.

I've looked at this thread title numerous times and in my head I say "sa-rose" ("rose" as in "morose" not the flower) each time. And I've read the thread with the "correct" pronunciation.

I would look at it and be utterly flummoxed. I would either associate it with the closest name I can think of, Circe, and pronounce it Sir-see, knowing that was probably incorrect, or try to sound it out as Say-oh-ear-s or Say-oh-ear-see, knowing I was almost certainly mangling it.

Speaking as someone who had both an unusual name and an unusual nickname (although both were spelled phonetically), everybody will get the name wrong. Adults will pronably have a harder time with it because they have more preconceptions about names.

At the start of the school year she will have to wait for them to call whatever their approximation is and then teach the teacher the correct pronunciation. Any time she has an appointment, she'll have to listen for anything approximating her name, and then verify that it's actually her name being called.

Not only will it be mispronounced, it will be mispelled. I can't count the number of times my medical records were lost because somebody apparently mispelled my name. With today's computerization, that may be less likely to occur, but people will mispell it in ways that may seem unimaginable.

If you like the name, go ahead and use it. As an adult, I could have easily changed my name. My husband (with a conventional name) did change his. I had gotten used to clarifying my name and it's not that big a deal. I also expect people to mispronounce it and will answer to anything vaguely similar. I did choose to drop the nickname so that I only have to teach one confusing name, rather than two. Family and old friends still use my nickname.