# Samhain pronunciation **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 1, 2018, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samhain-pronunciation/823821 "2018-11-01T04:33:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2018, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samhain-pronunciation/823821/1 "2018-11-01T04:33:07Z")
I’ve always thought Samhain was pronounced ‘SAH-when’ or ‘SOW-en’, but recently (and even a couple of decades ago – on _The X-Files_, I think) every time I hear it in a TV show or movie it is pronounced ‘Sam Hayne’. Have I been mispronouncing it for more than half my life? ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2018, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samhain-pronunciation/823821/2 "2018-11-01T04:40:56Z")
Your pronunciation is correct, altho’ Google shows several ways to say it. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2018, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samhain-pronunciation/823821/3 "2018-11-01T04:42:38Z")
Scott Gaelic will often sound like “samhuin”, Irish Gaelic sometimes sounds like “sow-in” but I don’t know if some other form of Gaelic will be close to “Sam Hayne” ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2018, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samhain-pronunciation/823821/4 "2018-11-01T04:44:23Z")
> [@rat\_avatar](#): > > Irish Gaelic sometimes sounds like “sow-in”… I learned it from people who spoke Connemara Gaelic. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2018, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samhain-pronunciation/823821/5 "2018-11-01T04:51:27Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > I learned it from people who spoke Connemara Gaelic. That specific is way past my pay grade, the Halloween movies are wrong though. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2018, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samhain-pronunciation/823821/6 "2018-11-01T06:26:00Z")
It’s an Irish word. (_Samhuinn_ is the Scots Gaelic equivalent.) SOW-in or SOW’n is a close enough approximation to the pronunciation. There’s a mild regional variation - in the north of Ireland the vowel in the final syllable is more likely to be voiced. I have occasionally heard “Sam Hain”, always from US speakers, who I assumed were simply trying to apply the rules of English orthography to an Irish word that they had never heard spoken. That rarely works out well. ---
**Author:** ![Arkcon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Arkcon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arkcon)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2018, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samhain-pronunciation/823821/7 "2018-11-01T12:38:35Z")
I only heard fictional US sources, I didn’t see the _X-files_, but I think cartoons like _The Real Ghostbusters_ and other sources went **Sam Hayne** , and I always pronounced it that way, in my head, when I read it in stories. 'Course, once explained, its obvious that the Gaelic word would be pronounced totally differently. But I did think it was an ancient English word that predated the Christian era. So … ordinance fought. Unless … I’m correct, and it was something like Sam Hayne in English? ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2018, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samhain-pronunciation/823821/8 "2018-11-01T12:43:00Z")
There are those who wish that when Gaelic orthography was codified, there was an attempt to make it even slightly phonetic in English. I am one. I don’t know what the point of making spelling so bizarrely difficult. I mean I excuse the French because they probably spell things that way to deliberately make English speakers sound stupid … oh I guess the Irish may carry a small grudge too. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2018, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samhain-pronunciation/823821/9 "2018-11-01T13:32:00Z")
Gene Simmons pronounced it “SOW-in” last night on Jeopardy!, for what that’s worth. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2018, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samhain-pronunciation/823821/10 "2018-11-01T14:02:39Z")
Ok… so the pronunciation is established. How did they get from Sow-inn/SOW-in to spelling it “Samhain”? ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2018, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samhain-pronunciation/823821/11 "2018-11-01T14:10:01Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > There are those who wish that when Gaelic orthography was codified, there was an attempt to make it even slightly phonetic in English. I am one. I don’t know what the point of making spelling so bizarrely difficult. I mean I excuse the French because they probably spell things that way to deliberately make English speakers sound stupid … oh I guess the Irish may carry a small grudge too. Sure, and Spanish speakers wonder why English and French do not actually pronounce half the letters they use and do so differently from one page to the other. But we should not hold it against the Gaels, Franks, Saxons, Angles and other assorted groups that they mcguivered the Latin alphabet as best they could to fit the people’s speech. By the time it got to them the actual Romans were no longer around to correct them (sure, they could have had also the foresight to add more spare letters, but hey, hindsight). But really why should a language not directly related to English seek to coincide pronunciation with English. ---
**Author:** ![BobArrgh](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobarrgh/32/2881_2.png) [@BobArrgh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobArrgh)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2018, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samhain-pronunciation/823821/12 "2018-11-01T14:25:54Z")
In Irish, the letter “h” is used to soften the letter that precedes it. The Irish language uses “initial mutations”, in which words undergo a change in spelling and pronunciation, depending on what comes before. For example, the word for “good” is “maith”, pronounced “maw”, with an aspiration at the end (kind of like the second “h” in “huh”). But, after certain words, the word is pronounced “waw”, with an aspiration at the end, and is spelled “mhaith”. But wait … it gets weirder. In the case of an “m” followed by an “h”, the pronunciation of the “mh” is further dictated by the vowel that follows. The general rule of thumb is that if the vowel that follows is a “broad” vowel (A, O, or U), then the “mh” is pronounced as a “W”, but if it is followed by a “slender” vowel (E or I), then the “mh” is pronounced as a “V”. (That’s the general rule, but there are 3 main dialects in Irish, and the pronunciations can change, depending on the region.) To answer **bump** ’s question more directly, when Irish orthography was being developed, the monks made up the rules for transcribing the sounds of the words into a written form. I’m not sure exactly why, but they did not use the entire Latin alphabet, and only chose to use 18 letters, but with those letters and the use of “h” as the softener, they were able to reproduce all the sounds of the language. Also, it isn’t just Irish that seems weird. In English, there are thousands of words that don’t appear to follow whatever rules you think they should. Consider words with the “-ough” ending and all its variations: lough, slough, through, thorough, plough, cough, etc. I’ve been studying Irish for 4 years now and am absolutely hooked! I’m not sure why. Even though I live in the USA, I am currently going through the study guide for the O-Level “Leaving Certificate” in Irish, which Irish high-school students take at the end of the last year, similar to the SAT or ACT in the USA. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2018, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samhain-pronunciation/823821/13 "2018-11-01T14:42:53Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > I don’t know what the point of making spelling so bizarrely difficult. Which is why I never learned Gaelic when I had the opportunity. I couldn’t get past the spelling. There was one word that was spelled something like ‘claidhmaigh’. It was pronounced ‘clive’. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2018, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samhain-pronunciation/823821/14 "2018-11-01T14:51:20Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > Sure, and Spanish speakers wonder why English and French do not actually pronounce half the letters they use and do so differently from one page to the other. But we should not hold it against the Gaels, Franks, Saxons, Angles and other assorted groups that they mcguivered the Latin alphabet as best they could to fit the people’s speech. By the time it got to them the actual Romans were no longer around to correct them (sure, they could have had also the foresight to add more spare letters, but hey, hindsight). Actually, there were a number of additional letters used in early English. Look up wynn, yogh, eth, and thorn. They just didn’t survive in English, although some (if not all) have in other languages such as Icelandic and Faroese. I suspect we can blame the Norman invasion for the loss of these additional letters. The dominant French speakers didn’t understand them, so they went away. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2018, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samhain-pronunciation/823821/15 "2018-11-01T15:21:47Z")
1. Irish and Scottish spelling is reasonably phonetic, certainly compared to English. So is hanyu pinyin. If one does not _recognize_ Samhain as an Irish name (and know the rules) then there could potentially be some confusion (say with a guy named Saerbhreathach signing a hotel register in Astana), but Samhain seems like it would usually come up in a Celtic context. 2. “Fictional US sources” are not authoritative pronunciation guides 🙂 3. Re. old pronunciations, Wiktionary says samain/samhain = /ˈsaṽinʲ/ while admitting “some details of Old Irish phonetics are not known”. ṽ has “no English equivalent; like v but nasalized” ---
**Author:** ![Motorgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e36b37/32.png) [@Motorgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Motorgirl)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2018, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samhain-pronunciation/823821/16 "2018-11-01T17:06:32Z")
Are we pronouncing SOW as in “sow the wheat” or “the sow had 8 piglets” ? ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2018, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samhain-pronunciation/823821/17 "2018-11-01T17:09:01Z")
Like a pig. ‘Sau’. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2018, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samhain-pronunciation/823821/18 "2018-11-01T17:56:18Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > Actually, there were a number of additional letters used in early English. Look up wynn, yogh, eth, and thorn. They just didn’t survive in English, although some (if not all) have in other languages such as Icelandic and Faroese. I suspect we can blame the Norman invasion for the loss of these additional letters. The dominant French speakers didn’t understand them, so they went away. For a trivial fun fact, the use of “Ye Old \” stems directly from the original use of the thorn character (Þ). It was originally spelled “Þe Old \”. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2018, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samhain-pronunciation/823821/19 "2018-11-01T17:56:47Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > There are those who wish that when Gaelic orthography was codified, there was an attempt to make it even slightly phonetic in English. I am one. I don’t know what the point of making spelling so bizarrely difficult. I mean I excuse the French because they probably spell things that way to deliberately make English speakers sound stupid … oh I guess the Irish may carry a small grudge too. English orthography is the least phonetic of all European languages. Why should any other language’s orthography be constructed for the benefit of English speakers? How about making English easy to pronounce from the point of view of Italian or Spanish first? The fact is that Irish spelling is quite logical for the Irish language. If people can learn English with its inconsistent spelling, it’s really not that hard to learn Irish or French, which are both far more consistent than English. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2018, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samhain-pronunciation/823821/20 "2018-11-01T18:03:56Z")
> [@bump](#): > > For a trivial fun fact, the use of “Ye Old \” stems directly from the original use of the thorn character (Þ). It was originally spelled “Þe Old \ > Eventually Þ ended up looking a lot like “Y” in certain printing formats, and we ended up with “Ye Old \”. Here’s another: The “gh” in “F” sounding words like “enough” is because the words typically had a sort of guttural ‘gh’/‘ch’ type sound like in “loch” or “Bach”, represented by the letter “Ȝ” (yogh). Eventually French scholars started replacing it with “gh”, and then sometime later, the pronunciation changed to more of a “F” sound, but the "gh"s were left behind, leaving us with “enough” or “night”, oddly enough. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/samhain-pronunciation/823821.md?page=2)