That would be my prefered pronunciation too, I think most of the old people say it that way in Conamara. But the other pronunciation is more common nowadays.

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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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The other pronunciation was resurrected from Old Irish, it's basically what the name was like in the 10/11th century. So the new pronunciation is actually a resurrected old one and the pronunciation of the older generation in Conamara is actually the new one!

This happens on a load of surnames. I've heard my surname on recordings from native speakers from my family's native area and it sounds nothing like the "Modern" (but in fact reconstructed old) pronunciation. Same with a million town names in Kildare, Meath and the other eastern counties.

For example Athy is given as:
Baile Átha Í in official documents, but that name is from the 10th century. The actual last native speakers in Kildare in the 1860s said Bleáthaí.

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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

Thanks for the explanation Lon Dubh.

It's complicated alright.

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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.
___________________________________________________________

Well your posts have taught me a lot, so I've got to pay back the debt somehow.

I think something similar might have happened with your name. It would have been Brigid in older forms of Irish, which lead to people saying "Bridget" when they switched to English, but then in Irish it kept evolving to give Brighid -> Bríd.

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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

The old "Brigid" would've had a punc on the G, so the G wasn't pronounced as a G - but then English speakers didn't understand that and it turned into the hated Bridget.

I do wish people kept the old spellings of personal names and surnames. They look so much better.

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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.
___________________________________________________________

You'll also get an odd "hybrid" pronunciation of "Brighid" here (mostly among neopagans)...like "Bridget," but with a "d" on the end instead of a "t."

Redwolf

The 2 Siúns I know pronounce it like shoo in and they are bith Irish teachers.

Do you happen to know when this older pronunciation was revived? I'm thinking that it must have been quite some time ago; the 2 oldest, most conservative speakers that I'd ever met (both of them from Gaeltachtaí in Munster) said "shi-VAWN" as the normal pronunciation for Siobhán – in fact, one of them was my landlady in Corca Dhuibhne.

About the 1910s-1920s. Some of the revived names are quite popular in the Gaeltachtaí like Deírdre or Aoife.

If you go back before the revival native speakers sometimes had names that wouldn't be used now, like Bonabhantúra, Eochaidh, Mórlinn, Féilics. So alot of normal Gaeltacht names have died out and names from Old Irish saga literature (revived in 1900s) have become popular.

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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

Very cool – thanks for the info!

By the by, I had no idea that Déirdre and Aoife were revived names.