A colleague (for reasons best known to herself) wants to know how to write her children’s names in Hebrew.
Their names are Cliodhna (CLAY-na) and Shaunnin (sha-NOWN).
Now, I know in theory this wouldn’t be difficult by phonetically working it out, but I want to make sure that whatever words those letters form don’t have obscene or bizarre meanings in Hebrew!
I know it’s Friday, but any help would be appreciated.
thanks.
Phoenetically:
Cliodhna - קלינה
Shaunnin - שנאון
I don’t think vBulletin can handle vowel marks, so that’s the best I can manage.
first I gotta admit: I would never have guessed that something spelled “clidoh” would be pronounced “clay”. But I guess a country full of leprechauns is entitled to have a funny language… 
However, I would add an extra letter to the Hebrew…
The way Alessan suggested, a Hebrew speaker would be more likely to pronounce it “Cleena”. (first syllable rhymes with “Clean”)
If you add an extra letter:
קליינה
it looks more like “Clay” -na (rhymes with “play”), although it might get mis-pronounced as "cly"nah. (rhymes with “Sky”)
That’s why I didn’t do it - I actually wrote it your way originally, then changed it.
But really, both ways are good.
Thankyou!
Um, irishgirl, are you sure about the pronunciations you’ve given? I used to live with an Irish-speaking Irishwoman named Cliona [the -dh- is pre-spelling-reformation, but it’s the same name]. She said “CLEE-uh-nuh,” but answered to “clee-OH-nuh” as well. There is dialectal variation in Irish but -io- can’t be AY in any of them.
Shaunnin is an odd-looking name, impossible by Irish spelling rules. I assume it’s meant to be Seáinín, which is the diminutive of Seán, equivalent to John and the source of Shawn, Sean, Shaun, etc. The diminutive looks like it can be a woman’s name, as well (exactly equivalent to Janine or Janeen). It would be pronounced “SHAWN-een,” with both N’s palatal. I don’t think Hebrew can render either one very well, but they can do at least as good as English can.
ETA: I didn’t notice that you were talking about American children. Why would anyone saddle their child with a foreign name in approximation of that language’s unfamiliar orthography and then change the pronunciation to something impossible in the original language and unfamiliar in the target language?
Did I miss something? I didn’t see any reference to American kids. irishgirl is in Northern Ireland.
You’re right. I must have assumed American on the logic that no one but my own people could be simultaneously so ignorant and yet so committed. I can’t imagine how someone in Ireland could come up with Shaunnin, much less that pronuncation.
“shawn-EEN”, actually. There are one or two of them around. You’re dead right on “Cliodhna” though.
But, in fairness, there is the occasional Irish person who mispronounces their own name (in terms of the rules of Irish orthography, I mean). The Sinn Féin politician Toiréasa Ferris says her first name as “tir-AYSH-uh”, even though S isn’t supposed to be aspirated next to A. I think it’s down to her parents’ poor grasp of the language!
Yup, and it’s getting more common. I know one couple who called their child Aoíbhe, but pronounce it Ava instead of Eva. It makes my brain hurt whenever I see her name in writing!
The vowel (and other) points are important though. If the second name was pronounced with a “s” instead of “sh” it would be “our hatred”, I think. The root that means “hate” is sin-nun-aleph, the first three letters of the name. The difference is whether the dot is on the right or the left of the top of the first letter.
(According to the Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew-English Lexicon [Biblical Hebrew] and me who is very tired.)
I thought this thread would be about the following old joke:
A Jewish guy is walking around the Lower East Side, when he sees a friend from his village in the old country!
“Chaim? Chaim!” he calls out “It’s me, Shlomo! I didn’t know you came to America. How are you?”
“Oh, I’m fine, Shlomo. But I have a new name in America - Shawn Ferguson.”
“How did you end up with that name?”
"Well, Shlomo, when the ship was docking at Ellis Island I got so excited I forgot how to speak English. And when we were in the line for customs I got so very excited I couldn’t remember my own name! So when the customs guy asks me questions, all I can say is ‘I’ve forgotten my name!’ "
Which, in Yiddish, is ‘Shane fergessen!’
Where’s the “happy orthodox jewish thread hijacking guy” smiley when you need it?
Thanks for the correction. I’ve been studying Irish for a long time, but mostly as a reading language, so it’s easy to make such mistakes. Does the diminutive always take the stress, then? Thinking it over, I’m pretty sure it always does when those words / names are borrowed into English (Colleen, Doreen, Eileen, Kathleen, Noreen, etc.).
I’m not sure if there’s a hard and fast rule about that (paging hibernicus!). There is a general rule that a syllable with a fada (accented vowel) usually takes the stress, although that’s not a particularly useful rule in a name like Seáinín.
Hard and fast rule? This is Irish we’re talking about!
Seriously, I don’t know; you could hear it either way and it wouldn’t sound strange. “ShaNOWN” on the other hand…:dubious:
How would Hebrew without vowel marks handle O’Malley as distinct from Malley?
With an *alef *and a *vav *at the beginning.
*Alef *is a “blank” letter, which means it can be seen as an A, O, E, I, or U at the beginning of a word; depending on the attached vowel; and even without vowel marks, several Hebrew letters also serve as vowels - vav, for instance, can be pronounced O or U, while *alef *in the middle of a word is pronouced A.
מאלי
או’מאלי
Oh, and about the the board not being able to handle Hebrew vowel marks.
Can you see this?
עִבְרִית
(Of course, figuring out how to type the things is your own problem. It might help to know that in Unicode, which is the only way you’ll manage to use them here, Hebrew vowel marks are combining forms: Little ‘partial’ characters that attach to the previous character.)
That’s interesting. I’ve only ever heard that first name pronounced “CLEEN-na” and the pronunciation of the second one is how I would say the name of the street my brother used to live on (Shanowen Rd.)
what do the names mean? when i try to find my name in other languages i find out what they call a rocking chair, not how they would say the english pronounciation.
say one of the names mean “strong one” one would then find out how “strong one” is said and written in the language of your choice.