Customer Reviews

Beyond Shannon and Sean: An Enlightened Guide to Irish Baby Naming

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"Beyond Shannon and Sean" offers parents lists of Irish names not alphabetically but by category: Irish family names, saints' names, even names from James Joyce books. The names are all CAPITALIZED in long list, which is distracting.

As other folks have indicated, there is little clue in pronunciation. Okay, so AOIDHGHEAN is an Irish saint's name. But male or female? The saint of what? And how in the world does one pronounce it? Not very helpful for the expecting parents looking for a name.

My wife and I enjoyed the book but found it to be extremely deficient in providing pronunciation and also in defining the meaning of each name. The book also seemed a bit disjointed. It did not follow well from one section to the next, with the same name often appearing in multiple sections.

This text offers a selection of Irish names, but does so in an eclectic and whimsical method, rather than in a clearly organized manner. Some sections have fictitious names, listed just for humour. On the other hand, some context is offerred in order for the reader to learn of Irish cultural context of names. Some sections include Irish Saints' Names, Irish Place Names, etc.

The largest drawback, in my opinion, is the deficiency in pronunciation assistance. Although the authors do provide some pronunciations, they do so only sporadically, and even then, often their provided glosses either confuse or contradict other sources. With truly Gaelic names and a readership unfamiliar with these names, more careful glossing is a strong need.

If you like picking names by feel, apparent popularity, or general connotations, then this is a nice book for Irish names. If you like more details on pronunciation and history, you will need to look elsewhere.

The main reason that we bought this book was to find Irish names based on their meanings. Unfortunately, there are very few meanings of any of the names listed. If you are looking for an extensive list of Irish names but not interested in their meanings, then this is a good book for you. Otherwise I have come across many general name books that have much more complete lists of meanings along with the names.

This book is much better than you would gather from reading the reviews. Although it's true, the pronunciations are not always correct, the book is an excellent source of interesting Irish names. There's also a section of names that are not used in Ireland for humans but which might appeal to people looking for an Irish-sounding name. The book also offers some historical perspectives not in other naming books.

Since Irish is a tough language to pronounce merely by looking at Irish words, it might be a good idea to get a brief overview of the language before wading through the names. It'll help with pronunciation. If you can't be bothered (who has the time?!), just double-check a name you like with a more official Irish source. That's what I do & it's no big deal. I really like the way the book is organized and I enjoy the extra info so it's well worth the price I paid for it, despite its few flaws.

This pair of authors has several other charming naming books. If you're a writer (or a pretender, like me), their little books are very handy.

This book is entertaining and makes a great conversation piece among my Irish relatives and friends but I have to be honest and admit that it's not very helpful or pratical with it's pronunciations or advice and I will be looking into buying some of the other Irish baby name books out there.

I have Irish ancestry and I absolutely love Irish names and I bought this book and despite the lack of pronunciations and the few pronunciations they give being questionable I still love this book and all the cool catagories and lists that are so much fun to read and this is definitely my absolute favorite baby name book!

I have found a lot of great boy and girl names that are so different then the typical popular names like Brian, Ryan, Kevin, Shannon, Kelly, Erin, etc, and I highly recommend this cool book!

The book has very minor flaws but I love it anyway and give it five stars for everything that is right about this book!

First for the positive: I'm giving this book two stars instead of one (or none) because it did enlighten me to some Irish names I'd never heard of.

However, my first complaint is that the lists are incredibly repetitive. I can't tell you how many times I read the names Molly, and Siobhan. It's almost like 10,000 baby names, but 8,000 of them are repeat occurances. There are a few gems to be found, but you have to dig mighty deep for them.

Secondly, and what made it even harder to read, is that the true Irish names are written in ALL CAPS, single spaced, with no pronunciation key or meaning or explanation. It's rough. At times I felt like I was skimming a text in a foreign language. Don't think that the lack of a pronunciation key would bother you? Try your hand at these anti-phonetic (as we know them) names:

MUIRIOCH
MAELECHLAINN
SEIGHIN
UAITHNE
AOIDHGHEAN
CUMHAI
DUIBHLEAMHNA


Which you find out at the end of the book, in the index, are pronounced:
Murray
Malachy
Shane
Ooney
Eean
Quinton
Divlona

If your heart is set on finding a different IRISH name, don't let this review sway your purchase decision... but if you are like me and just considering the possibility of one, you'll have to wade through a lot of headache inducing compilations of nonsensical letters to find anything worth adding to the name list, save your energy & brainpower and pick a book with a pronunciation key (and even a meaning-wouldn't that be great!)

This book is terrible. It is hard to follow and the sequence is illogical. There is no section that simply lists names and meanings...everything is chopped up into silly little chapters. All in all, this book offers little new information. I got a better list of Irish names from a regular baby name book.