If - like me - you’re not actually from Ireland, the names here can be incredibly difficult to pronounce. You should have heard me the first time I read Circle of Friends, pronouncing Dun Laoghaire in my head (incidentally, it’s Dun-Leery). So it was no surprise when a few of my early readers in Canada and the U.S. asked how some of the names in this book are pronounced which prompted this handy-dandy pronunciation cheat sheet.

Since I’m not a linguist, I pulled the pronunciations (including emphasis) from an Irish baby names website and polled my friends here in Dublin. If anything is incorrect, please accept my humblest apologies.

Declan: DECK-lan
Aoife: EE-fa
Moira: MOY-rah
Colm: C-uh-lum
Cian: KEY-an
Eoin: O-in
Aidan: AID-un
Liam: LEE-um
Siobhan: SHIV-awn
Róisín: Ro-SHEEN