Name Pronuciation

Hello, my name is Liam OHaver. I live in the US. I recently found some family papers that show my family name as Ohaoibher. Can anybody tell me how to pronounce this?Thank you in advance for any replies.

Hey Liam,

How exciting! Do you know more about your family origin, which county they are from in Ireland maybe?

Based on the spelling it could be O'Hare or O'Harer, but it is hard to say as some of the spelling may have been changed when written to English, for example, the may be missing special symbols.

I saw your other reply, but it is even better that you created your thread. 😉

Hello Elodie,

Thank you for your reply. I am uncertain of the specific county but it would be one of the counties in Ulster. I am hopeful to find out more but my documentation is limited.

Liam

Have you checked Brian's thread?

Brian is a genealogy guru here on our Community and he created this thread to help anyone starting their journey retracing their roots. 

Do not hesitate to share any information you have here as the community might be able to help as well. 😉

That’s GREAT advice... I will check it out.

Hi Liam
Different regions of Ireland have different variations of pronunciation so O'Hay-Ver or O'Hiv-er depending on where the person saying the name is from in Ireland. A lot of Irish names were converted to phonetic english upon arrival in the states so O'Haoibher would literally become Ohaver (as it did for your ancestors!) The 'bh' sound in the Irish language is the same as the V sound. 
I hope this helps :-) 
Áine 

Hi Aine,

Thank you for your reply. I believe your explanation for the spelling change is correct. My name is pronounced o-hay-ver... I just did not see that in the Irish spelling. All of the vowels and th bh was very confusing. Again thank you for your help.

Liam

Amazing Áine!

By the way Liam, were you able to retrace more from your ancestors?

Haha, yes Liam, we love our vowels!! We like to leisurely enunciate words "as gaeilge" (in Irish) so the collection of vowels in the middle would allow us to build up a bit of steam to emphasise the V sound in the middle!!
It's a beautiful language, so descriptive and lyrical :-) 

(Even your first name would be pronounced differently in local dialects - e.g. Lee-am, Lee-um and Leem!!!!)