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I said to him that his mission is to definitively find out what the child's name is! He saw it written down on FB when she was born and said her name was Eileen. I asked him if it couldn't be EV-i-lin instead and he said later that he thought it was. But he can't remember now if he found out for sure if it is Ev-i-lin, Eev-lin, Av-el-een or something else. The reason I thought it was Ev-i-lin was because there is a trend in Ireland for parents to use Irish spellings for English sounding names like Aoibhe for Eva.

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I have known two Eibhlíns IRL and they both were I-leen! They were both from Kerry.

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I think EEV-lin for Eibhlin or EEV-leen for Eibhlín is quite legitimate actually. However the EEv-lin prn is not used here much at all for Evelyn. So they would be more likely to use the EV-i-lin prn instead if that's the route they are going.

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Irish names are weird. In one sense there is a right way and a wrong way of saying them. But there also is variation during to regions - and changes due to the influence of the fact that most of the population speak English as their first language. A good example of this is Aoibheann. The original proper Irish way is EE-vin. But people use it and say it Aveen and I reckon this prn is as popular as Ee-vin. Another good example is Siobhán - subtle and not so subtle regional differences due to what part of the country the speaker is from.

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Hope all this helped rather than confused.

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