That’s how Don Pardo pronounced it when actress Siobhan Fallon was on Saturday Night Live.
Well I don’t know really. I always believed that she had an Irish name because she was in fact Irish, from a town in Tiperary called Thurles, so to me it seems like a perfectly normal name.
If she grew up in the UK then I guess it wouldn’t have posed any problems either.
My first girlfriend was a Siobhán and told me that it was the Irish version of JAne or Joan (I can’t remember which!).
I have a cousin named Siobhán living in Fort Worth who is changing the spelling to the Chev version to make her life a little easier I believe 
It’s the Irish version of Jean, IIRC.
Or is it Janet?
I had forgotten that; it’s probably why her friends spell the contraction Chev, not Shev.
Her name is actually Siobhan, though.
I get here first!!
dances a stereotypical jig
My Aunt had a suitor when I was a kid, the name of whom was pronounced “La-Vaughn”. I’ve always assumed “Lavonne” or “LaVaughn” but by any possibility might it have been Liobhan or something?
My daughter in law is a Siobhan. My son tells people to think of the words: shove - ON. It gets a giggle, and is actually remembered more easily than other explainations.
She’s named after her mother, who mostly goes by the nickname Bonnie.
I don’t think so. I think Lavonne is french origin.
Bhbhbhbhbhbhbhbh!
How does one pronounce my sister’s names correctly; Síofra and Díanaimh? Different Irish speaking folks come up with all sorts of different pronounciations. Our family sticks with “she-o-fra” and “dee-a-nuvh” at the moment
I once met a woman who insisted her name was pronounced “Si-ob-bane”. I told her than in that case, there was no way her parents were as Irish as they claimed.
Stop! You’re both right! Jane, Joan, Jean and Janet are all variations of the same name, the feminine of John (Johann, Jean, Sean, Ian etc.).
In Sacramento, there is a Seamus Avenue, pronounced ‘see-mus’.
I’d pronounce them the same way, although I’ve never encountered the second one.
And just a note to Ponster and Twisty: I did in fact find this thread before the two of yous, but I had nothing to add to the discussion, previous posters having taken care of it just fine
And then there are all these American girls named Caitlin, pronounced “Kate-Lynn.”
There are plenty of girls in Ireland who have that name and also use that pronunciation (as apposed to Coyt-leen). It is not necessarily incorrect or a solely Americanised usage.
Of course, if the name is really Cailin, then of should be pronounced as Coll-een.
As I had expected but you should have considered the plight of the poor dopers doing their headless chicken dance waiting for someone who ate black pudding for breakfast to put their minds at ease
As far as I can remember (different SD thread) there was an Irish name that went to the USA in and cames back as ‘Kate-Lynn’ which has now been adopted by Irish mothers as a cool name for their kids.
As Ruadh is vegetarian I doubt she’d be eating black pudding for breakfast 
I have black and white pudding in my fridge, but didn’t eat any thins morning.
Cáitlín is the name you are thinking of, and Kate-Lynn is a bizarre version of it (apologies to all the Kate-Lynn’s reading). I’d try and explain the pronounciation, but it’s really hard to spell out with feck all knowledge of phonetics
Vegetarian or pescatarian ? Just curious as it reminds me of another SD thread.
As for Síofra and Díanaimh, I know how to pronunce them but I just know how to explain it to anyone phonetically.
That’s a good point Twisty.
It’s enormously difficult to explain a vocal sound to someone who speaks in a different accent to you.
Fer instance, how you’d say something simple like shirt or worm would be entirely different to how I’d say shirt or worm. And we know how we both speak!!
Isn’t there some sort of international phonetics convention? SMA? Something like that?