A woman shared her ‘hot take’ pronunciation of a popular Irish boys’ name and has been criticised by numerous Irish people.
Irish names often become the butt of the joke in English-speaking countries (that aren’t Ireland). We have all seen the quizzes to see if celebs can pronounce tricky Irish names, or heard the complaints that Irish names ‘don’t make sense’ or have ‘unnecessary’ consonants in random places.
What people are missing is that these names are in another language and that just because Irish people speak English, it doesn’t mean the names in our native language will follow English spelling conventions.
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One woman went viral recently when she claimed to understand why the popular Irish name Cian was pronounced Seán on the US reality show, Love on the Spectrum.
‘Hot take, Cian is pronounced Seán,’ said content creator Jechatona on TikTok, referencing one of the cast members mispronouncing the name.
Trying to back up her ‘hot take’ the creator referenced the words ‘electrician’ and ‘magician’ which both end in -CIAN, which is pronounced ‘shun’
@jechatona I GET IT LOGAN I GET IT!!! (I know it’s pronounced Kee-an 🫠 I’m just saying why I think Logan says Sean instead 😩) #loveonthespectrum #netflix #cian ♬ Clair de lune/Debussy – もつ
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It’s an Irish name
Many Irish people chimed in in the comments, explaining exactly how to pronounce the name Cian and why the names Seán and Cian, both Irish, are pronounced differently.
‘Both are Irish names. So no Cian is not pronounced like Sean. Irish has its own phonetics,’ one person wrote. ‘The original name is Cían. The fada over the i makes an eee sound,’ someone else added, and a third said: ‘you said “shin”… so still not Sean.’
However, in a Reddit thread discussing the episode, it turns out that in the US, the confusion between the two names is relatively common.
‘My name is Cian and people here in the states call me Shawn all the time, especially if they recognize that it’s Irish. I’ve even had people correct me about it and I’m like “thanks, but I think I would know”,’ one person wrote.
