Surname Pronunciation

Scraiclad

An bhfuil is aon duine cén baile le déireann an sloinne Mac Oitir?

Does anyone know how to pronounce the surname Mac Oitir (Cotter), is it like Aw-tur or Aw-chur or something else entirely? Also is it Mag for a vowel or is that just old fashioned?

Insect Overlord

I'd pronounce it something like "mokwitcher", myself.

Scraiclad wrote: »

Aw-chur

But in other canúintí, your suggestion could be pretty close.

I found this on Google:

On Mag, from Hugh McGough's website we learn, along with much else, that "MacLysaght comments that it is often the case that when the prefix Mac is followed by a vowel, it becomes mag. Although he doesn't say so, the use of a G was hardly ever used in the written form of Mac Eochaidh and seldom appears in the ancient annals. The use of a G seems to be mostly an oral or phonetic phenomenon that first became apparent when the Gaelic name was translated into English."..."Since the process of anglicization of Irish names must ordinarily have been based on the oral pronunciation of a Gaelic speaker as reduced to writing by an English speaking person, when a Mac sounded like a mag to an ear used to receiving only in English, Mac sometimes became M'G, MacG, or McG.

from this site: http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~lennan/len002f.htm

Hope that helps!

Scraiclad

That's definitely a help. Is it the Munster dialect you speak? I'm using the Donegal canuint. It's a fairly drastic change from Cotter anyway.