Aoife

Although I don't love the spelling or the associated mythology, I love the meaning and pronunciation of this name. I also admire its uniqueness and Irish charm.

A very beautiful name, as one user commented, and rightly so. Aoife evokes powerful literary vibes. In my mind's eye, it is written in loopy calligraphy, white and yellow mingling among the inky swirls. The 'EE-fa' pronunciation is charmingly cute and whimsical, like a fairy. It's not one of my favorites, but picking apart every detail of every letter, and hearing it tinkling like a bell, always makes me smile.

This name is hard to pronounce! I still don’t quite understand how it’s pronounced. I always thought it was Ay-ow-ife.

Such a rare name, and hard to pronounce... Not a fan!

Very beautiful name. I love the meaning too. A warrior princess? How powerful and amazing.

I love Aoife and I think it's actually one of the easier traditional Irish names. It is still relatively easy to explain and not as difficult as Aoibheann, for example, which I love as well. Aoife can work outside of Ireland!

The name sounds lovely but the spelling leaves something to be desired. Whilst the pronunciation is a lovely name which flows off of the tongue, the spelling in no way resembles the name, which looks like someone has headbutted the keyboard then claimed that a random collection of letters makes a specific sound.

Almost like Eva. Very cool.

I'd pronounce it Ai-yo-fee, but I guess that's not the usual way to say Aoife.

I choose this name for my horse as she is beautiful and the name's very suiting. Also knew a dog with this name.

LOVE my middle name Aoife.

Very lovely if it is pronounced the correct way, ee-Fuh. This name sounds like the name of a princess or something to me, and I don't think of Eva.

A most inviting Irish name. Neither boring nor overstated. Certainly sweet, whether you're born in Ireland or not. I love it. Gaelic names are rather easy and warm.

I'm not Irish but my grandparents are. My daughter is now 15 months old and is named Aoife Belle. I don't have issues with people not pronouncing it correctly. I've only had to tell them once or twice. In my opinion, you shouldn't have to be Irish or living in Ireland to have a Irish name! My cousin is called Alisha and people call her 'A li sha' and that is a very common name. It doesn't matter what you name your baby. You'll always get mistakes.

I think it is a beautiful name, but I would not name my child that because people will spell and pronounce it wrong. It's the name of a girl at my school :).

This is a beautiful name and in my opinion we should start using these old Irish names wherever we live now even if we no longer live in Ireland but our ancestors come from Ireland. It brings a rich heritage to our children when they have names like these they are very uncommon and much better then the standard new names... without much history or meaning.

Yes, Aoife is a very pretty name, but unfortunately there aren't very many Gaelic speakers here in the States. Most everyone here would butcher the crap out of the pronunciation.

I don't see the big deal about using this name in an anglophone country. If I had Irish heritage, I would MUCH rather have a traditional Irish name than a butchered and/or faux one. And this is a fairly simple Irish name at that.

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My siblings grew up with much more complicated foreign names, but they and others learned the pronunciation and spelling just fine. Xenophobes just need to suck it up.

This is the classic attempt of an American parent trying to sound unique. How many people will pronounce this correct right of the bat? I think we're looking at a whopping ZERO. The name itself, when pronounced correctly, is pleasant, but a tad bland. But, please, can we leave the Irish names to the Irish and name our children something they can pronounce themselves?

I don't care for this name. It's kind of boring and overrated in my opinion. I'm not really fond of unanglicized Irish names.

Who the *heck* can pronounce this? Unless you teach everybody in town (your, most likely, NON-Irish town) the paths and twists of Irish phonetics, you're gonna be getting "ah-oy-fuh," or "ah-oh-ee-fay," or God knows what.

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Though when it's actually pronounced correctly, it's a beautiful name, yeah.

I like Aoife. I wouldn't name a child this, but I think it's nice.

To be honest, when I first looked at it I pronounced it "Oyf!" :P
It's an okay name, but could use a different spelling (one that doesn't start with every other vowel but the expected one, haha).

Very beautiful name! I have a fondness for Irish names. I can easily imagine it on a little girl as well as a grown woman.

Beautiful name, one of my favourites. I'd never use it though, simply because I know that most people would spell and/or pronounce it completely wrong.

Good luck teaching your kid to read. :)

*eek* Is this pronounced like it's spelled? I mean I know that Irish doesn't have the same phonetics as English, so is there some other way to say this name other than ay-oh-ee-fay? If not and this is the right way to say it, I find it to be a bit vowel-heavy and "ay-oh-ee" sounds like "owie" to me so you end up with "Owie Fay"(?) -- the fairy of boo-boo's? Hmmm. Um, no. Not pretty to me. I would LOVE to hear it said by an Irishman. I'm sure it lilts off the tongue, said correctly.

I think it's a pretty Irish name, but I personally wouldn't name my child that.

Gorgeous Irish name, I really like it.

Very, very beautiful name, I love it!

Very pretty name, I like it much.

My name is Aoife and in the environment in which I work I state my name to 100s of people every day, receiving different impressions of the name. The majority of people like it but others get frustated because it contains most of the vowels in the alphabet. Sad but true! Usually people would like to change their name, but I love mine!

Aoife means beauty - and I think it's a suitable meaning for the name. It sounds beautiful and melodic when it's spoken with a true Irish accent.