Gráinne can be a tricky name if you've never heard it before.Getty Images
A social media user has asked for advice after they received backlash from a mum when she corrected her pronunciation of her daughter’s name.
Irish names can be difficult to pronounce, especially for people who are not native Irish speakers. And if you have an Irish name you are probably used to people forever mispronouncing it.
But if you heard someone mispronouncing their own child’s Irish name would you intervene and correct them or just let it go?
This is a question one person had when they heard a mum mispronouncing her daughter’s name.
She corrected her, but it really didn’t go down well and she wondered if she was wrong.
The mum explained the situation on Reddit, telling users of the platform that when she was talking to a mum in A&E she mentioned that her daughter, who was there, was named “Grain." The Reddit user was confused so commented on what an unusual name it was.
The mum said that her daughter’s Irish name, after her great-grandmother which is when “alarm bells” started going off in her head and she realised that the little girl’s name was Gráinne.
She said: “I tried to be very tactful, and I was like, ‘Irish has such an interesting alphabet. How is her name spelled? Irish names can be tricky.'"
She went on and explained that she told the mum how the moniker is typically pronounced in Ireland, but the mum was not happy to be corrected.
She wrote: “She told me that I ‘ruined her daughter’s self-esteem’ and that her ‘life [was] ruined’ by me saying that ‘her existence is wrong.’”
The woman clarified that she only said that the little girl’s name was pronounced “atypically” and hadn’t intended to ruin the little girl’s self-esteem.
She asked for advice and most of the respondents were on her side. One person said that the mum was just lashing out because she was embarrassed: “You didn’t embarrass the child you embarrassed the parent, who frankly should be embarrassed she named her kid a name she didn’t know how to pronounce. In reality you did the kid a favor by pointing this out early on so the mom can deal with it. She would have found out eventually and it could have been when she was old enough to me be legitimately embarrassed.”
“The mom seemed surprised by the actual pronunciation and probably could’ve done some more research on the pronunciation before naming her child ''grain.' Who in their right mind thinks that 'grain' is a family name? And everyone knows Irish names have different pronunciations than their spelling. Eoin, Niamh, Siobhan, Padraic, etc… Mom was embarrassed and wanted to make you feel bad. Kid is going to find out one day that it’s pronounced Grainne….” someone else said.
*This article was originally published on EveryMum.ie.