Nico
Muhly,

So, my spam filter has been working overtime lately. I did this whole series of projects in England recently, and as a result, my inbox has been filled with people named Imogen Carter and Bryn Ormrod and so on; I must have a hypersensitive spam filter because those people’s emails go right to the trash! I can’t turn it off! I have to search through pages of spam until I find that Kindly Imogen and Awesome Bryn are, in fact, for real, and have written to me real words about real things, rather than the usual:

“A marchioness.” “Why, woman it silky experience does not much concern us, back do you think it
“You must see bump nail that to be tail an utter impossibility,”

Now, this morning I got an email from somebody called “Eithne Staunton.” The spam filter got it, but I’ve been checking in there every day and dug it out. And I realized that I might have to call her! Eithne. Now, in my town in Vermont, we had a woman called Ethna Blow, no kidding, whose mother was also called Ethna Blow; they were Big Ethna and Little Ethna, despite the fact that Little Ethna (the daughter) was a power-lifter. Ethna ðnudóttir? I’m not even going down this rabbit hole. Anyway, it occurred to me that I don’t have the adequate command of the Ancient Tongue to make my way through this woman’s name. So, I took myself to Irish Baby Names Dot Com, and lo and behold you can listen to Frank fucking McCourt read the names to you, along with cute stories about their origins! So, it turns out that it is pronoucned “Enya” just like the singer, because it’s the same name. This is the best website ever. Oonagh! I wonder what the ability of, like, Average English People is to see Blathnaid and know how to pronounce it. I feel like Siobhan I’ve come across enough to know, but really not Dearbhail or Eibhleann so much. Anyway, any English readers of this space, let me know what’s going on. Also: is there a resurgence in Ireland of naming kids Old-School? I have some Icelandic friends who just went really oldschool with their baby, which I think is totally great. I’m excited for America to get back to the puritan names, I have to tell you. Lamentation! Learn-Wysdome! Safe-on-Heighe! Celerity! I think I should have been named Celerity Franksson, honestly, but I’ll make do with this old rag.

But now my new fantasy is “People Who Have Won Pulitzers Prize Pronouncing Words Attendant Either To Their Nationality or Profession.” Or really, Pronouncing Anything Just Because. Wouldn’t you pay good money to have, like, Oscar Hijuelos reading out the names of the parks in New York? Or Ned Rorem reading the Examples of Hanky Code? Or, like, Annie Proulx reading the recipe for Chasseur Sauce?

And finally: