On Sun, 26 May 2024 12:52:34 +1000, Alex Goodwin wrote:

>On 26/5/24 10:43, Jeff Zeitlin - editor at freelancetraveller.com (via
>tml list) wrote:
>> Indirectly related to this, don't assume that the _pronunciation_ of any
>> particular name has anything to do with the way it's _written_, even if
>> it's written in its "native" alphabet. The most commonly cited examples of
>> this are
>>
>>     * Cholmondeley (pronounced as if written "Chumly")
>>     * Tagliaferia (pronounced as if written "Tolliver" - and I encountered
>>       one example where it was pronounced as if written "toe-fur")
>>     * Featherstone-Haugh (pronounced as if written "Fanshaw" or "Farnshaw")
>>
>Some Irish (at least female) names seem to have a tendency towards this
>from what I understand - frinstance:
>
>- Siobhan (pronounced as if written "Shivonne")
>
>- Niamh (pronounced as if written "Neve")
>
>- Roisin (pronounced as if written "Rosheen")

It's not only _female_ names; consider 'Sean', /Shawn/.

But this _isn't_ an example of the phenomenon: These names are Irish
Gaelic, not English. Gaelic uses a variant of the Latin alphabet, but
within its own rules is fully phonetic. "Si" and "Se" _always_ pronounce
the 's' as though it were the English 'sh' digraph; 'bh' is _always_ 'v',
and when 'mh' isn't 'v', it's 'b'. And there are other oddities - but
_internally_, it's consistent.

(You wouldn't consider the German consistency in pronouncing V as F and W
as V and J as Y to be an example of this; it's the way German works. Same
here.)

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