I was having a discussion with a friend, and I said if I ever have a son, I'll name him Seán. But he said that I actually pronounce it incorrectly. He said he lived in Ireland for five years and it's pronounced more like "Schon" (he also said Siobhán is pronounced with a "von" sound, and not a "vawn" sound like the british and australians do).

I know that the pronunciation varies from region to region, but I'd hate it if I turned out I'd be pronouncing his own name wrong. I'm from London, so the way I pronounce it sounds similar to "Dawn." Could somebody help me out with the correct or more accurate way of pronouncing this name?


Thank you


Any reply would be much appreciated.

You are correct jungle. Basically:

á = aw
bh = v

So Siobhán sounds like "Shi-vawn"* in English and Seán sounds like "Shawn".

*"Si-vawn" is the Old Irish form of the name, the Modern Irish form is Siún pronounced "Shoon" rhyming with "moon".

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

Thank you for the reply, An Lon Dubh, that has cleared up the confusion for me.

As in - Shawn the Sheep, but there's also the Ulster way of pronouncing it, which is transcribed into English as Shane. The s precedes e (which is a slender letter), so in that case you pronounce it as a sh, not as an s, this is followed by an a with an accent on it (known as a fada) - á - which usually rhymes with law, but in Ulster is more like a long 'day' sound without the dipthong ay-ee.

In my experience, Americans are woeful on vowels -not only do the vowels vary a lot by region, but both long and short vowels shift a lot and there are things like lacking tense/lax distinctions plus an seeming indifference to differences which must contribute to their total inability to detect and pronounce what are to me glaringly different sounds. I've even heard people mix up 'l' and 'r' so I'd pay ABSOLUTELY NO ATTENTION to someone form the US who wasn't into languages and would be sensitive to such matters

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__̴ı̴̴̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡*̡̡ ̴̡ı̴̴̡ ̡̡͡|̲̲̲͡͡͡ ̲▫̲͡ ̲̲̲͡͡π̲̲͡͡ ̲̲͡▫̲̲͡͡ ̲|̡̡̡ ̡ ̴̡ı̴̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡̡.___

Seán: No not like "Schon". The closest to the Conamara pronunciation would be like in "dawn". But like said previously it depends on dialect. I think in Ulster it's more like "Shan".

Siobhán: You do hear some people say it as a long drawn out "vawn", and that is incorrect.

Seán (my Ulster pronunciation is only approximate!)
. .

Siobhán
. .

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It is recommended that you always wait for three to agree on a translation.
I speak Connemara Irish, and my input will often reflect that.
I will do an mp3 file on request for short translations.
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Hello, thank you also for the reply and especially for the audio. I just want to ask another question. Why does seán have the "awn" sound but not siobhán? I'm confused because they both have the fada accent mark over the letter a?

Just to add, I've also heard "Siobhán" pronounced more like "SHOO-awn" (this in Donegal).

Redwolf

Seán and Siobhán both have the "awn" sound.

In Munster, the stress is on the 2nd syllable:
Siobhán – shi-VAWN

Ok, thank you. That makes sense.