Now Cillian Murphy won the Oscar, will everyone finally learn how to say his name right?

Julie Jay on the trouble with Irish names

Coverage of Cillian Murphy’s Oscar nod has been a trial of endurance when it comes to pronunciations.

Recently I went for coffee with a friend. As we debated whether or not to get a scone (I say debate, but I’m not sure who we were trying to fool — a coffee without a scone is like Saltburn without Barry Keoghan — a whole lot of nothing) the waitress appeared. Given this is my friend’s local they exchanged pleasantries and at the end the waitress gave a cheeky, exaggerated wink.

“I’ll be sure to throw some extra cream on that scone Debbie,” the waitress said, which was a lovely if somewhat confusing endnote as my friend in question is called Denise. Debbie/Denise just laughed and thanked the waitress for the gesture, leaving me baffled.

“Why didn’t you tell her your name isn’t Debbie?” I asked, and my friend looked horrified.

“Julie, I couldn’t embarrass the poor woman like that,” she answered, appalled. “Sure I’ll just go by Debbie when I’m here, what harm is it doing?” 

And so it was that my friend expressed her commitment to living out her life under an arbitrary alias, for no other reason other than she couldn’t bear to cause momentary discomfort to a woman who probably couldn’t pick her out of a police line-up.

Perhaps it is a particularly Irish thing, this self-effacing, aw shucks, sure whatever you’re having yourself type response to announcing ourselves publicly, but I feel we are getting better at righting the wrongs of our mispronounced past.

Recent coverage of Cillian Murphy’s Oscar nomination has been a trial of endurance when it comes to pronunciations (Sillian), with some international commentators going to extraneous efforts to get it right whilst others are spoofing their way to the finish line as Irish names become increasingly du jour on red carpets around the world. Saoirse, Domhnall, and of course Fassbender are all forcing journalists to recognise that — wait for it —not all names are English.

A byproduct of greater diversity in contemporary Ireland means there is a broader understanding that pronouncing names correctly constitutes basic etiquette now. As a former teacher, there were always one or two new names I had never encountered before greeting me in the roll call come August, and I would always readily ask how to pronounce the new moniker as it appeared before me. 

To ask is not to admit defeat, but to admit that we are all learning together, and trying to make the next person feel as heard and seen as possible.

In her recent autobiography My Name is Barbara, Barbara Streisand speaks of how she has been forever aggrieved by people failing to pronounce her name properly. It turns out, she reveals dramatically, that her name is ‘Bar-ba-ra’ and not, as she has been miscalled throughout the years, ‘Barbra’. Hardly the most offensive mispronunciation of all time, but in Barbara Streisand terms this is a most outlandish slight, and let’s face it, the woman is quite rightly not one for letting things slide, lest of all in relation to what she wants to be called.

In a similar vein, I have a friend whose personal take on Destiny’s Child’s anthem would be: ‘Say My Name — Correctly.’ This same friend is from Dublin, but don’t judge her on that because she’s actually lovely. She is called Áine, a name pronounced ‘Awn-ya’ in West Kerry, where if you are looking to meet a plethora of Áines, is a great place to start your treasure hunt. 

Recently, my Áine bemoaned how frustrating it is that people continually mispronounce her name. Her name, dear reader, is spelled Áine, but is, as she has reminded me repeatedly, pronounced ‘Ayn-ya’. I dutifully nodded along whilst simultaneously wondering at what point I could tell my friend she has been mispronouncing her own name her whole life.

But then just as quickly, I recalled that I once lived with a Tyrone girl in Australia called Ciara who reinvented herself as Cee-Ara for her summer Bondi summer, and why not? Much like astrology, these self-renamings may lack legal gravitas but equally they’re not doing anyone any harm either, so let’s live and let live here. 

Given both my parents hail from West Kerry many people might be surprised that neither myself or my sibling had Irish names, but my mother always insisted that by giving us generic non-Irish names she was saving us a lot of trouble at future foreign borders. 

Julie Jay. Picture: Domnick Walsh

‘Sure every airport in the world has heard of a Julie,’ she said to me once, in what has to be the most Irish reason not to give your child an ainm Ghaeilge, that is, motivated primarily by wishing to save various passport control agents from the intellectual sweats of having to tackle the phonetics of our native language. 

On the plus side, it’s heartening to hear just how much international travel my mother anticipated for me, despite my career choice of Irish teacher sadly never taking me too far afield.

Still, I do feel there has been a resurgence of Irish names and a correlative pride in our national monikers. Gone are embarrassed Eamonns and suddenly we are all confident Conalls, rocking up to global media events with a newfound pride in our beautifully unique ainmeacha. 

It is an exciting time to be Irish, and an even more exciting time to have an Irish name. We wear our silent ‘fh’ as a badge of honour now, and we will no longer be diluting our phonetics to make it easier for an English speaker to grapple with what is a slightly different but equally valid way of saying things.

For any American journalists out there still struggling with ‘Cillian’ remember that if all else fails, just go with Mr Murphy, because as a former múinteoir that one is always a get out of jail card — tá fáilte romhat.

On a final point of notice for all 80s babies, remember the seemingly endlessly exotic ‘Ma-Ho-Nee’, from Police Academy? Well it turns out he was just Mahoney. I’ll give you a minute to recalibrate because no doubt you are now realising your entire life was a lie. Maybe sometimes mispronunciations aren’t always a bad thing.