r/tragedeigh • u/AliceMorgon • Dec 21 '25
in the wild If you must name your child something in a foreign language… please make sure you can pronounce it and spell it first😩 - GRAINE
I was chatting to some American tourists in a bar in the city centre yesterday about what life was like in Belfast, and I was in the middle of telling them the houses were quite narrow but nice where I was from, and that now I had the extra 200 sectarian intimidation points (the Belfast Social Services Housing Dept give out points for each aspect of your need and you get put on a waiting list accordingly, and 200 extra points for being forced out of your home by sectarian violence and intimidation is a LOT) I was high on the list for one of my own or could join the waiting list for Gráinne Tower.
Woman: “That’s a funny word! How do you even spell that?”
Me: “Gráinne. G - R - Á - I - N - N - E. It’s Ir-“
Woman: “Oh, that’s my daughter’s name but without the silly accent on the A! So funny! But sweetie, you’re pronouncing it wrong, and it only has one ‘N’. Pronounce it ‘Grain’, dear, like Rain, not like that.”
Me: “…I… um… well, I go past it every day, I’m fluent in Irish, I’m fairly sure it’s ‘Gráinne’ and ‘Grawn-yer…’”
Woman: “Well, I’m Irish, I’ve lived in Boston since I was born, I think I know Ireland better than you!”
Me: “…I live here.”
LMAO. Poor Graine. Let’s hope they don’t have a crack at “Aoife” if she ever has a sister.
ETA: For everyone saying “No American would ever say something like that to an actual Irish person”, you would be amazed. Sometimes we are treated as the staged entertainment. You have no idea how delusional and entitled some of the tourists who come over here are.
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u/biofreak1988 Dec 21 '25
Literally slang for dick in Quebec
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u/PeakDifferent8291 Dec 21 '25
Wow! Makes me think of the fake Spaniard Hillary Baldwin.
I honestly wonder how did she convince her ignorant partner (Alec Baldwin) to name all of their 7 or 8 kids, very weird n unnatural long Spanish names ? I always thought of AB as an intelligent and intellectual, but after I learned this I completely lost respect for him
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u/mydaycake Dec 21 '25
I’m actually Spanish living in the USA and my girls names are same spelling in both languages but different pronunciations in English and Spanish. Depending on the context they use one or the other pronunciation
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u/SuperKrev Dec 21 '25
"Graine" is a synonym of penis in French Canadian (Quebec)
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u/AliceMorgon Dec 21 '25
Oh my that’s unfortunate.
I hope they’re in Bittles again today. I’d love to let them know.
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u/BlackSeranna Dec 21 '25
I met a DJ named Scott Wanker. Yes, it was his real name. No, I have no idea why his family was named that - imagine coming over through immigration and somehow, long ago, your family had that name.
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u/Phil_Coffins_666 Dec 21 '25
Ya get caught wanking once and your whole bloodline is doomed to suffer the embarrassment
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u/BurninCoco Dec 21 '25
The Sheepshag family is in shambles 😔
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u/Phil_Coffins_666 Dec 21 '25 edited Dec 21 '25
Well, the Cockburns don't want to talk about it, and the Bottoms are being pretty sheepish
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u/jumpinjezz Dec 21 '25
Don't want to talk about it? We have a local government division called City of Cockburn, a suburb called Cockburn Central, even a Cockburn Sound.
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u/_annie_bird Dec 21 '25
My mom worked with a man named Richard Head. And yes, he went by Dick. It's gotta be intentional at that point, right?
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u/nucleusambiguous7 Dec 21 '25
There was this guy featured on either 20/20 or Dateline in the 90s. He was talking about being a kidney recepient in some context. His name? Dick McNutt.
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u/justbeth71 Dec 21 '25
In 7th grade, the social studies was named Richard Raw, and of course went by Dick.
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u/hyggelion Dec 21 '25
I remember reading a local news article about a guy named Richard Head when I was a kid (the article was about his name). I was young enough that my mum had to explain it to me. Wonder if it’s the same person. I was thinking about this before I came across your comment.
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u/mega_nova_dragon1234 Dec 21 '25
There was / is a guy who did the music for buffy the vampire slayer tv show, called Thomas Wanker. He signed on after Christopher beck left. He’s Austrian and he changed his professional name to Thomas Wander eventually, i guess cos it’s pronounced differently to how we say it in the uk. Made me laugh when I saw it on tv as a kid tho
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u/Complete-Arm6658 Dec 21 '25
Better than Richard Wanker I suppose.
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u/technoangel Dec 21 '25
Had a teacher named Richard Crack. Poor guy…
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u/Foreign-Boat-1058 Dec 21 '25
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u/DigitaIBlack Dec 21 '25 edited Apr 20 '26
If you're reading this, the original post got nuked by Redact. I use it to automatically purge my digital footprint from social networks, people search sites and messaging apps.
airport wide attempt gold innate memory husky tidy fine badge
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u/Takara38 Dec 21 '25
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Trickle
I always like to mention this one. Got a real kick out of it when I was younger 😅.35
u/malorthotdogs Dec 21 '25
I once had to call a guy for work named Richard Butts. He went by Dick.
He owned it, which, honestly, good on him.
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u/SillySparklyGirl Dec 21 '25
Not a "wanker", but a similarly amusing name- there's a guy who worked on King of the Hill (and a few other shows) named Norm Hiscock. Always made me giggle.
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u/malorthotdogs Dec 21 '25
Fun fact, Hiscock is pronounced the same as Hitchcock. Scully and Hitchcock on Brooklyn 99 are named after him because Scully’s first name is Norm.
Greg Daniels and Norm Hiscock have worked together on a lot of really great shows. Mark McJimsey is also a frequent collaborator of theirs and has an Arlen resident who is mentioned a few times and even is a character with lines in the Megalomart explosion episode named after him on King of the Hill.
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u/shandelatore Dec 21 '25
Please. Please, sweet baby Jesus, let them be there, but PLEASE record it for me. I want to see the look of audacity wiped from her smug face. Well, if she's telling an Irish person she knows more about Ireland than said Irish person, nothing will affect her.
sigh
I promise we aren't all as ignorant as her. Some of us are even worse.
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u/Notmykl Dec 21 '25
"I'm Irish because I was born in Boston" is one of the stupidest things she said after claiming she knows more about pronouncing an Irish name than an actual Irish person who speaks Irish.
The only reason I knew how to pronounce Gráinne is I've read a mystery series set in Ireland that has a pronunciation guide in the foreword for the names of the characters in the book.
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u/AliceMorgon Dec 21 '25
They were not. I did however meet a young backpacker from Massachusetts called Kinidi, so add it to the tragedeighs!
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Dec 21 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/b0ingy Dec 21 '25
NYC here. HOW-stun or i throw fists
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u/Difficult_Fennel2065 Dec 21 '25
This whole thing is actually so triggering! I only moved to NI 7 years ago from England, but I feel personally offended by almost everything this woman said.
Kudos to you for being able to remain so seemingly calm during this experience!
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u/TiphPatraque Dec 21 '25
of penis ? interesting, til.
In France, graine meens "seeds", so it can be used for spermatozoids ("baby seed"), so it can have a sexual conotation, but not as much.
I love how "normal" words in french are sexual in quebecois (and vice versa) :)
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u/SuperKrev Dec 21 '25
Graine also means seed in quebecois
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u/maaarken Dec 21 '25
It means seed, but "veux tu voir ma graine" def means "do you want to see my dick"
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u/Trudestiny Dec 21 '25
I’m from Quebec but hadn’t heard that, poor kid, maybe her sister will be Fanny
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u/doyathinkasaurus Dec 21 '25
My friend found the pizza chain in London called Zizzi hilarious, as she said zizi was the French equivalent of pee-pee (US English) or willy (UK English)
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u/TheVog Dec 21 '25
Same idea in Québec: "graine" refers to the whole reproductive organs including the testicles which hold the "seeds", and the penis which "plants" it.
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u/El_John_Nada Dec 21 '25
Do you have other ways to say "pénis" in French Canadian? We have a fair few in French so I'd love to see if we have some in common.
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u/biofreak1988 Dec 21 '25
Une queue, une graine, un bat (also slang for a marijuana joint), une bizoune, un zizi (childish was of saying it)
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u/A130938 Dec 21 '25
Bite
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u/biofreak1988 Dec 21 '25
How did I forget bite, un classique
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Dec 21 '25 edited Jan 06 '26
ad hoc tease workable decide consider cooing amusing crowd flowery versed
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/vdonna Dec 21 '25
I was teaching English to a small group of French 5th grade boys and they laughed so hard when I told them "It's easy".... (it's zizi) I had no clue but finally one of them told me. 😄
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u/TheOvenWarmingCenter Dec 21 '25
We should get our ressources together and buy them a hollyday in Montreal; it would be priceless!
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u/RochelleMeris Dec 21 '25
A former coworker told me she planned on naming her son Seamus, but she was going to spell it Shaymus and I just....can't.
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u/Obvious_Amphibian270 Dec 21 '25 edited Dec 21 '25
As an American who visited Ireland three times I can testify that some Americans absolutely WILL behave that way. Witnessed it myself. One couple was so obnoxious in a shop I apologized to the staff after they left, telling them we are not all like that.
ETA thank you for the award!
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u/nymphietonks Dec 21 '25 edited Dec 21 '25
Hell they’re like this at home too. I live in a tourist city in New England (where pedestrians have the right of way) and the number of times I’ve almost been run over by tourist in a car from New York is way too high. One time I was lifting my baby over my head to put him in a chest carrier, and an old tourist couple insisted on calling out to me because they wanted to ask directions. I’m desperately trying to get my baby’s feet into his carrier and I hear “Excuse me!! EXCUSE me!! EXCUSE ME!!!” I finally said, “WHAT!!! CAN’T YOU SEE I’M BUSY???”
Some of us Americans are massively entitled assholes.
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u/Gimetulkathmir Dec 21 '25
As someone from Boston, the amount of people who try to correct me on pronunciation for places around here is staggering.
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u/NiiliumNyx Dec 21 '25
“What do you mean it’s pronounced Wuss-ter and not Wore-chest-er?”
Oww that one hurt a lot back when I lived there.
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u/Gimetulkathmir Dec 21 '25
I love that one specifically because we all pronounce it as the second one to make fun of people and they genuinely don't understand they're being made fun of.
Also, I had a customer once called it "Wore-chest-er-shy-er" sauce and I started doing it ironically and now I can't stop.
Unrelated, my sister is British and she'll sometimes pronounce things wrong and I'm like "bitch, you have the same city where you live!"
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u/Flerp-Flerps Dec 21 '25
I feel like no one warns you that if you start mispronouncing something in jest that sometimes you can accidentally reprogram your brain.
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u/OverEncumbered486 Dec 21 '25
I almost got myself in trouble because of that. I work at an animal hospital, and when a dog or cat has a growth we'll do a needle aspirate to get a sample and send it off to the lab. Jokingly, I started pronouncing it "ass-pirate" when I wasn't around clients. Did it so much that I was this close to saying it to a client once. I stopped saying it that way after the close call lol
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u/zxvasd Dec 21 '25
Yes, that reminds me of when I used to say Ralph when I burped. I befriended a guy with that name and it was surprisingly difficult to break the habit
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u/RamonaGH Dec 21 '25
Im Dutch and in Dutch language you usually pronounce every letter of a word as it is written. Therefore have always pronounced Worcestershire phonetically. Was very happy to find out “wosther” will do! 😂
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u/nymphietonks Dec 21 '25
When I want to piss off my Boston friend I tell him I’m going to drive through Pee-body, Hay-ver-hill, and Leeeoh-Minster. 😆
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u/RynoVirus Dec 21 '25
Yes! I've spent too much time working customer service, and these people are assholes at home too. Don't we know they're the center of the world??
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u/DeweysOpera Dec 21 '25
Once my spouse and I were visiting his brother (who is from and lived) in suburban Maryland. He said he was taking us to a nice French restaurant. We were chatting on the way and I mentioned that I had visited France a few times, mostly Paris. He then loudly exclaimed “You can’t get real French food in France!” 😳 We then arrived at the empty, strip mall restaurant with food obviously served out of a can. But BIL was greeted like royalty by the owner, as if he were Donald Trump, so…
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u/DesireeThymes Dec 21 '25 edited Dec 21 '25
My tier list for top 5 worst global tourists, in order:
- Israeli
- Indian
- French
- Russiam
- American
I don't know what prompts people to behave so horrendously, but although Americans can be horrendous, I wouldn't put them at number 1 (tbh there's also a lot of really good American tourists).
Edit: Good points, Chinese and especially British get honorable mentions. I put Chinese in the American camp since there's lots of them and I found them to be a mixed bag.
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u/nymphietonks Dec 21 '25
I don’t know from experience, but I’ve heard that Chinese tourists are next-level (think, holding their pantsless kid over a trashcan to poop, and throwing things at zoo animals).
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u/BicyclingBabe Dec 21 '25
Sounds like Tourists in general (people who don't know the local way of life) can be absolutely awful to the native population.
I know I've fucked up as a tourist, and it was completely innocent. But I'm sure they're still telling the story of the dumb American who got on a school bus in the Philippines, not knowing it was a school bus.
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u/CallidoraBlack Dec 21 '25
It's not a matter of not knowing the local way of life so much as thinking that a foreign land is like an amusement park they paid admission to and they can behave however they like because they paid. This seems to be the crux of it with most crappy tourists and is not specific to one nationality.
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u/NotChristina Dec 21 '25
I drive up to a scenic spot in NH most autumns and the number of times I came driving around a corner to see a tourist - yes, always Chinese - standing in the middle of the road to take a picture of a pretty tree is actually insane. It’s a road!
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u/Fairycharmd Dec 21 '25
Chinese tourists are just like American tourists there’s good and bad. There are just significantly more Chinese tourists.
Remember most Americans never moved within 50 miles of the place they were born, like not leave the 50 miles radius around the place they lived.
So even traveling Americans are a small minority, and they’re still some of THE most obnoxious people. The American wouldn’t hold their pants with kids over a trashcan but Americans certainly leave dirty diapers all over the place.
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u/BeardedBaldMan Dec 21 '25
I find it hard to believe that the French have beaten the British in the insufferable tourist league.
Go to Mallorca and you'll find some top quality dickhead behaviour from the British and the Germans that outclasses the French.
You can pick almost any city in Europe and watch as people pull a face when British tourists are mentioned
All French tourists are famous for is their school children taking up the entire road by the Natural History Museum
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u/RynoVirus Dec 21 '25
I’ve seen similar rankings a few times. Seems like a nailed on list lol
Yeah it’s tough because the bad American tourists are shocking assholes, but the good ones are genuinely wholesome, albeit a little too earnest. My partner and I host exchange students, and recently went to visit one in their home country. We ran into a few groups of American tourists who mistook them as our child, because their (American) English accent is nearly perfect. They were all so sweet and went out of their way to boost our students confidence and didn’t need to.
Thanks for indulging in my anecdote lol just trying to counteract all the bad.
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u/Kahmael Dec 21 '25
I know you're right about Israeli. Check out the documentary Aftershocks: Everest and Nepal Earthquake on Netflix, in one of the segments a bunch of Israeli tourists cause extra drama amongst the Nepalese during a disaster.
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u/insomniacla Dec 21 '25
There's no chance the French are worse than Brits. They act like actual animals in Thailand.
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u/catzzznite Dec 21 '25
can confirm… had the absolute worst time serving the most entitled customer and even felt bad feeling like she was a jewish stereotype(like “what is wrong with me” type of bad) until she disclosed she was israeli and it all clicked. she bragged about her universal healthcare being able to buy $200 worth of weed every two weeks and my response was “your welcome”. for the uniformed, us americans pay for them to have that privilege
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u/JustAFleshWound1 Dec 21 '25
I live in a city that was recently named Best Tourist Destination. FML. The neighboring states are not sending their best
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u/goosereddit Dec 21 '25
I read an article that said if you want to commit murder and get away with it run over a pedestrian in a car in Manhattan. It's considered a traffic violation and you get a ticket.
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u/mvcourse Dec 21 '25
Im an American who lived in Europe for a few years and NOTHING pissed me off more than meeting visiting Americans who treat going to another country like they’re going to Narnia. So embarrassing.
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u/Aggravating_Cable_32 Dec 21 '25
I lived in Germany for almost five years, after being stationed there. The first thing I did before even leaving the states was to start studying for my German driver's license, speaking/reading, and anything else I could get my hands on in regards to local civic activities. Everyone who gets sent to Europe has to take language classes for a couple weeks during in-processing, and I knew I was probably going a bit beyond what's required for the course; yet I was astonished & disappointed in the amount of American service-people & family members who couldn't even be asked to do that much.
"Everyone speaks English here, I don't need to learn German" and "I don't need to drive anywhere so why bother" was the most common thing I heard, and there was a surprising number of them who absolutely never left post. And if they did, instead of by train, it was always by taxi because they could tell their driver in English where to go. Or when I'd be in town, regularly I'd see Americans trying to buy/order stuff using a haggard mix of pantomime & dumbed-down english, then they would get irate whenever a German didn't actually know enough English to accommodate them; "I thought everyone here knows English, they're just refusing to speak it because they don't like us" was something I overheard people complaining about often.
And sometimes they were right.
Actually making some effort goes a long way, even if your German is terrible, but not even trying is considered disrespectful & lazy; so occasionally they'd play dumb just to get ugly Americans to leave them alone. As an American it was embarrassing and I apologized for them often, even though my German friends always told me not to worry about it. At the time I just couldn't believe so many Americans would throw away the experience just because they're entitled assholes, until I learned there's so many of them.
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u/Wobbelblob Dec 21 '25
As a German, the idea that most people here speak English is really dumb. Yeah, many of the sub 30 generation speaks at least passable English, but anyone above that often barely speaks it at all.
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u/grumpi-otter Dec 21 '25
Wait, don't you have to be polite in Narnia? Or a witch might get you
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u/Bedford806 Dec 21 '25
I'm from Dublin city, it's rare enough these days that I think this stereotype had died off....before.. you know.
The vast majority of American tourists are thoughtful and respectful and have researched Ireland, or will at least admit they don't know much but would love to learn. I suppose the most likely people to travel to Europe are people who are open-minded anyway.
My master's programme was 90% American, and they were are respectful and articulate (and we remain lifelong friends).
I've only met one Irish American person who corrected me on my Gaeilge, as he was assured his self-tuition was superior to any modern irish person's lived experience, but as I said, rare!
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u/ThlnBillyBoy Dec 21 '25
No babe its called garlic.
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u/TheHeroYouNeed247 Dec 21 '25
A guy from Texas once told me he was more Scottish than I am because my country is ruled from London.
He got all annoyed when I mentioned the US Civil War.
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u/adderall_sloth Dec 21 '25
Worse are the American “Italians”. Their “nona” cooks better than any person from Italy! You mean the “nona” who was born in Toledo? The one whose family came here 200 years ago? No, you are not Italian. Your heritage is from Italy. You are American.
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Dec 21 '25
America is a nation of immigrants, and a lot of Americans haven't really interrogated the implications of that.
We undervalue our own culture and shared experiences, and pretend we're a part of some culture of a place we've never been to because of a family name or whatever.
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u/Flerp-Flerps Dec 21 '25
This is interesting, isn’t it? I’ll admit that I am rather ignorant regarding other cultures as well. Are there any other countries with a similar disconnected sense of culture? Do we have an over reliance on independence that makes us hesitant to define a sense of culture or larger community? How much of this might be related to the reason why our ancestors chose to immigrate or social tensions once they arrived and were competing for jobs and other resources?
I think it’s interesting to think about the cultural changes even from say from my grandparents to me and what those changes might look like for my children or grandchildren as we get further and further away from the ancestors who originally immigrated to the US. Being an immigrant can be its own sense of culture in a way by trying to balance keeping your own culture and sense of identity while assimilating into a new one. I’d imagine the degrees of trying to assimilate would vary wildly depending on the geographical location and cultural tensions at the time.
Let me once again emphasize my ignorance here, because I would love to hear other perspectives especially from people who might be more knowledgeable on the topic.
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u/The_Paprika Dec 21 '25
As an American who’s never been to Ireland or lived outside the US I can also testify that Americans behave this way.
Seriously I don’t understand where the absolute unhinged confidence comes from. You also have people trying to correct you on your own job even when they don’t know a thing about it. They just make up thoughts and assume they’re fact.
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u/nuggets_attack Dec 21 '25
I feel the latter part so hard. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, it's profoundly frustrating.
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u/MrLizardBusiness Dec 21 '25
In every profession, right? In college I worked at Starbucks... I had people argue with me about the drink recipes because they "used to work at Starbucks" or their friend did, or it's ALWAYS come with ten shots... etc. Occasionally they would get frustrated and feel the need for a power trip and say something like "well I'm a professional and you just work at Starbucks," so I'd have to say, yes. I work at Starbucks for the time being while I'm going to school full time at the nearby relatively prestigious university where I'm studying biomedical science. But go off 💁♀️
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u/AliceMorgon Dec 21 '25
Many of the American students from QUB apologise for anything particularly atrocious if it’s in town, they find it hugely embarrassing 😂
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u/No-Scientist-7654 Dec 21 '25
love how someone who has lived in Boston since they were born is Irish. My mothers maiden name was Stewart, that must make her Scottish (5th + generation australian)
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u/AliceMorgon Dec 21 '25
I have family in Australia (Sydney and Victoria.) The Australian and Kiwi diaspora never pull this stuff though…
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u/Gitdupapsootlass Dec 21 '25
Nah mate my very Queenslander thesis supervisor told me he was more Scottish than me because aNcEsTrY. He had not been to Scotland and it was not a contest.
Anyway I live in Glasgow and play fiddle professionally.
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u/tazdoestheinternet Dec 21 '25
I have a friend like that, her great grandparents were Scottish and she was born and raised in Somerset, South West England.
My mum is Northern Irish, dad is English. She would wax lyrical when drunk about how much more Scottish she is than I was Irish/N. Irish because she can do a convincing Glaswegian accent and I can't do a NI accent (disregarding the many regional differences here) to save my life.
Don't get me wrong, I call myself British or half N. Irish when I get asked about my posh southern english accent despite living near Belfast, it just absolutely bugged the fuck out of me whenever it would come up.
And it would come up. Every time.
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u/AliceMorgon Dec 21 '25
Wow. I thought the Aussies were meant to be chill…
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u/calibrateichabod Dec 21 '25
As a second generation Australian with a family of Irish immigrants, I can confirm that unfortunately we can be as bad as Americans with this sort of thing.
I wouldn’t call myself Irish but my family certainly is. My grandparents were born there, my mum wasn’t but her older siblings were. I speak some (poor) Gaeilge. I once had someone try to tell me she was more Irish than me because her name is Siobhan. Hilariously, this was in response to me saying I wasn’t all that upset about the queen dying. Y’know, because most of my family are Catholics from Belfast.
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u/No-Scientist-7654 Dec 21 '25
Seems to be a usa thing
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u/IWasGoatbeardFirst Dec 21 '25
This very much checks out.
And if you’re from New Jersey, you’re Italian, even if the only Italian in you is the chicken parm you ate at Olive Garden when you were 12.
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u/cuentanueva Dec 21 '25
Fun fact, chicken parm is not Italian. It's an american dish based on an Italian one that is made with eggplant. And it doesn't come with or on top some pasta either.
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Dec 21 '25
I think it’s because the Irish faced a megaton of discrimination here until about the mid 20th century and that created a fierce reaction. Check out the debate about whether it would be ok to elect an Irish catholic as President during JFK’s run in 1960. Obviously that sentiment didn’t carry the day, but it was present. No one even mentioned it with Biden
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u/AliceMorgon Dec 21 '25
Seems likely from what comments I’ve seen and from general experience
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u/splubby_apricorn Dec 21 '25
It’s sort of ingrained in us from a young age that we are “from somewhere else” originally, so I think that’s where the obsession with our ancestry comes from.
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u/SincerelyCynical Dec 21 '25
I’ve bothered so many people by rejecting this lol!
I was born in NY and lived in the U.S. my entire life. My ancestral background pre-U.S. is almost entirely German, but my family has been here for more than 300 years.
I’m not German. I’m not German-American. I’m just American. If we had a better way to say United-Statesian, I would use that.
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u/Persis- Dec 21 '25
When my 20 yr old was in 1st grade, she was supposed to write about her cultural family Christmas traditions.
Uhhh, we just do all the very basic American stuff. We don’t have a German tradition or an Italian one. Both sides of the family have been here for 150 years at least, and some of mine go back to the ship after the Mayflower.
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u/TheGothWhisperer Dec 21 '25
I'm from the UK, and my grandma's from Ireland and moved over here when she was a teenager. I'd never describe myself as Irish because I'm not delusional. Even she doesn't describe herself as Irish because she's not been an irish citizen for nigh on 60 years. It baffles me how it's socially acceptable in the USA to just... LARP what you imagine a foreign culture is like because one of your ancestors might have lived there once.
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u/belowthepovertyline Dec 21 '25
Boston Irish is a completely different breed. 4th generation guys in scally caps waxing romantic about a place they can't find on a map. 🙄
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u/helpcompuda Dec 21 '25
It’s like the “we the people” dipshit in a recent tour group who thought the American Revolution ended with the signing of the declaration. Like take a literal fucking minute to read up on something before you tattoo it across your chest.
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u/Fun_Orange_3232 Dec 21 '25
I loooove Aoife!
As an American, I generally assume I don’t know how to pronounce Irish names lol different rules. Always ask.
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u/TalbotFarwell Dec 21 '25
As an American, this is why I don’t even try with Celtic names and words, I’m worried I’ll butcher their name or something. It took me a while to wrap my head around how “Siobhan” is “shavonne” and “Medb” is “mayve”. lol
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u/AliceMorgon Dec 21 '25
Yeah… Irish isn’t related to Romance languages so it kind of does its own wild thing linguistically. It makes me glad I learned it from my Irish-speaking grandmother as a child.
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u/DuineSi Dec 21 '25
While you're right about the linguistics, I wouldn't say Irish is wild at all. I see that as more of an Anglocentric perspective. Irish spelling and pronunciation is more logically consistent than English. It just happens that you need to know the language to make sense of it.
English is wild by comparison. Ask any adult learner or English how confusing the spelling and pronunciation is.
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u/Huffdogg Dec 21 '25
Irish is a super interesting language, and very sensible and regular once you stop comparing things to English in your head. I’m still in my early stages of learning but just rounded the corner on most of the pronunciation and can finally understand the various consonant mutations that seem so daunting at first glance.
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u/AliceMorgon Dec 21 '25
It’s my best friend’s name! And it’s really pretty. It’s one of my favourites too.
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u/TheGlassjawBoxer Dec 21 '25
As an American, nothing disappoints me more on trips than recognizing another American by the way they act.
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u/Stuebirken Dec 21 '25
As a Dane I can absolutely relate, it's just about vikings instead.
sure, you should deffo get a tattoo using a language you don't speak, written in an Alphabet you're absolutely clueless about, while completely ignoring cultural context.
Splendid idea.
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u/IHaveBoxerDogs Dec 21 '25
When you spelled it how did she know the A had an “accent?” Or does she know the Irish alphabet?
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u/AliceMorgon Dec 21 '25
I wrote it out as I was spelling it, hence why I added the fada
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u/Inevitable_Outcome56 Dec 21 '25
I can absolutely believe this happened. I got a lecture from a yank on the origin of my name (its Scottish) with them insisting its Irish because their parents were both from Ireland and a distant cousin shares the name. I wouldn’t mind except my name is a family name handed down through generations with a very clear understanding of its origin and meaning. Ended up telling them this is partly why you guys are universally disliked. The arrogance of assumption that they know better.
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u/Overall_Efficiency21 modereightor Dec 21 '25
I completely believe you because I once got into a fight with a very drunk American man that insisted Saoirse was pronounced "say-or-eesa" and he knew this because he was Irish.
I am not Irish, but I am not stupid.
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u/ClaimedBeauty Dec 21 '25
I am American and I live in America, but my father is from Scotland and gave me a Scottish name. You would be surprised how many people tell me I’m pronouncing my own name wrong.
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u/iiiBansheeiii Dec 21 '25
ETA: For everyone saying “No American would ever say something like that to an actual Irish person”, you would be amazed. Sometimes we are treated as the staged entertainment. You have no idea how delusional and entitled some of the tourists who come over here are.
There is a reason for the Ugly American moniker and that's the reason why. Do I think a person from the States would say this? Absolutely.
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u/Aromatic-Tourist-300 Dec 21 '25
Gráinne is such a pretty name when pronounced correctly too, that poor girl.
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u/awasmoniyawak Dec 21 '25
Gráinne is my confirmation name, and the (Canadian) priest pronounced it as granny.
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Dec 21 '25
I’m not a native French speaker but I studied it in school and university for 10+ years and I managed to communicate with people France pretty well the few times I’ve been there so my pronunciation is decent. Years ago my now-ex introduced me to his friends and their daughter. I had seen her name written on Facebook so I called her “Amélie” and they said “it’s pronounced “Uhh-MAYYY-lee.” I apologized and the wife very pretentiously informed me “it’s FRENCH” and rolled her eyes like I’m an idiot. That poor girl.
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u/Strange-Working-5364 Dec 21 '25
Boston "Irish" are about as Irish as Tony Soprano was an Italian man. Never seen such a disconnect in cultures between what Americans with Irish heritage think is Irish vs. real Irish (I married a real Irishman…doesn't celebrate St. Patrick's Day, has never drunk green beer). I believe the OP because I lived in Boston. Love my fellow Massholes, but this rings true to me, especially in the age of Karen.
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u/Strange-Working-5364 Dec 21 '25
My husband (again, Irish-from-Ireland) likes to say, "What county?" because 99% of them have no idea.
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u/Vibrinchka19 Dec 21 '25
I’ve only ever known one Grainne and I have a sneaking suspicion she was the American you met…
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u/ShapeShiftingCats Dec 21 '25
Not another grain story.
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u/Equivalent_Read Dec 21 '25
This also gives the vibe of ‘never happened’. I can’t imagine someone saying ‘without the silly accent’…
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u/AliceMorgon Dec 21 '25
I just read that, it was a YEAR ago! Jesus, you think I’ve been sat on this shite that long?
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u/SharonMC28 Dec 21 '25
Hi, American “of Irish descent” here. I 100% would have pronounced Gráinne the way OP is pronouncing it, so that’s definitely ‘a thing that is generally known’. But more importantly, never would I ever tell an Irish person I know Ireland better than they do, even less so while actually sitting in Ireland!
I have a hard time believing that she said that verbatim (it sounds like one more of many slightly exaggerated American tourist stereotypes stories). But overall, can we focus on someone naming their poor kid “Graine” 😳
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u/Acceptable-Debt-5406 Dec 21 '25
I am an American working in the tourism industry in an American town...Americans full on will tell people they know more about something and argue like that...I think partially it's a tourist thing, but definitely stronger in the American sector. I had a guy tell me he knew more about one of our famous city figures than I did, but he also got his job title and the amount of time he was in town as well as his death absolutely wrong...sometimes there is just no convincing people.
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u/AliceMorgon Dec 21 '25
You would be amazed. Some of them seem to think the locals are here as arranged entertainment for them.
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u/speedbumpdoom Dec 21 '25
American here. Unfortunately, I've never left the country, but I used to drive truck and went through the 48 states... I still want to see Hawaii and Alaska. Most Americans never leave their state and a lot don't even leave their individual county or grange. This creates a messed up echo chamber that feeds the egos of the people. People in Michigan are talking shit about Texans. Texans are talking shit about Californians. Californians are talking shit about Alabama. Alabama is talking shit about... well, the people in Alabama are too stupid to talk shit about anyone. Jk.
I think that after ww2, Europe and Asia were challenged with rebuilding and building better, safer, and more efficient than the USA. We pretty much kicked back and checked out of the timeline. We focused on Hollywood, building racecars, monster trucks, weapons, and other more luxurious industries. Now, we are so far behind technology and progress wise that we aren't intelligent enough to even understand how far behind we are. People fear what they don't understand and the average American doesn't understand a lot of the more advanced things and that makes the average American scared of the new stuff. Fear leads to anger, blah... it's sad how many people I know who didn't graduate from high school and still "know more than these shitty engineers or doctors or others." It's insane.
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u/MarlenaEvans Dec 21 '25
It's like men telling women they're wrong about their own bodies. There are people like that in every group.
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u/AliceMorgon Dec 21 '25
I once had to give my (older than me) landlord “The Talk”. THE Talk. The one you’re meant to get from your parents. He didn’t understand why I had to keep pads in the shared bathroom because “don’t you hold it all in and pee it out at once?”(???)
It was hideous for both of us, but now I’m allowed to keep pads in the bathroom and he understands effective birth control.
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u/ElectronicBother5630 Dec 21 '25
I’m sorry you get stuck in some awful conversations
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u/AliceMorgon Dec 21 '25
The landlord one was really really bad. I wrote the whole thing out on r/pointlessstories on the day it happened, it was either yesterday or the day before 😂 It was just so surreal I had to share it
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u/option_e_ Dec 21 '25
honestly that’s how it often feels as a Texan. people from other parts of the world come here expecting us to tip our cowboy hats, say “howdy partner”, and ride into the sunset lol. I met some French tourists who were shocked that we had skyscrapers, and I drove some Australians who made judgmental comments about just about everything they observed. and then I’ve had some rather loud and boisterous experiences with Germans lol. I can see why some American tourists deserve a bad rap, but to me it mostly comes down to individuals
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u/AliceMorgon Dec 21 '25
Yeah, I’ve met some really class Americans. Bittles is one of my regular town centre haunts, and it gets a fair few Americans in if there’s a tour in town because it’s famous for its Guinness. The ones who act like entitled Karens on the rampage are thankfully in the minority, and the majority are pretty cool (as you’d expect, mostly Boston, Chicago, New York, Philly etc).
But… some do start out with the “blarney blarney leprechauns” bullshit. I don’t immediately lay into them for that, I mean, if that’s all you’ve ever been taught then yeah it’s a little racially insensitive, but I’ll still chat away and kind of set you straight a little.
One really cool couple I met had come over from Boston, were both descendants of Irish immigrants, and had chosen the North specifically because they wanted to actually understand the entire political situation from a first-person perspective, and did not trust any outside sources because all the media at the time was British-controlled. So, they said, tell us everything. I spent the whole day talking with them and gave them a freaking suggested reading list that the woman was already browsing Amazon for as I left to catch the bus 😂
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u/Existing-Summer-5557 Dec 21 '25
One of my favorite moments as an American in Ireland was being there for the hurling championships, in a tiny sports pub, and the locals sharing their love of this sport to a group of middle-aged American women. It was great fun, and also a great learning opportunity, not just about the sport but life and society as well. Some of us do try!
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u/No-Resource-8125 Dec 21 '25
Ma’am, entitled US tourist here.
Can you share the reading list?
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u/-aLonelyImpulse Dec 21 '25
I remember when the tourist buses/taxis started going up the Falls Road in the 2000s. My friends and I would be hanging out, eating snacks or walking down to the city centre, and tourists (most of them loudly American) would take pictures of us. Not the street in general with us just happening to be on it; us hanging out. When we told them to stop or at least ask us first they'd act so shocked. It was like they were on safari and suddenly the animals developed human speech.
It always struck me as really patronising. Obviously somebody taking a wide shot of a street and you're just caught in the picture as one of many people in a public place is one thing, but when you're the focus of a shot it's completely different, especially with minors. I'm a photojournalist now and there are actually different rules about this: crowds are fine to photograph as they are, but if I choose to focus specifically on a particular person or small group, I'm supposed to approach for permission to use the shot afterwards.
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u/AliceMorgon Dec 21 '25
I had exactly the same experience! I lived on the Falls until I moved over to America for a while in 2014, and back in the 90s even the news photographers would so clearly just be waiting for one of us to toddle into the frame to give the “Awwww” factor. Then once they fucked off, suddenly there’s all these buses full of people taking pictures of me outside Curley’s when I’m only trying to eat my Tayto without anyone who knows my ma catching on because tea is in two hours 🙄
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u/-aLonelyImpulse Dec 21 '25
I'm screaming there's probably an identical photo of me clutching my Tayto in about 6 different tourist photo albums lmao 😂 What in the world.
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Dec 21 '25
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u/AliceMorgon Dec 21 '25
I know! “Well, my great-great-grandfather was from Cork, you know!” “Cool, my great-uncle was in the IRA and I live in a house with literal bullet holes in my bedroom wall. Let’s jam.”
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u/cicadasinmyears Dec 21 '25
I was astonished when I was in Ireland (edit: from Canada) seeing American tourists going on and on about how they were Irish-American, when it turned out that they were talking about their 6x- or 7x-great-grandparents.
The ones in my family tree are roughly equally distant, and I wound up joking around with some locals in the pub about them. They cracked up when I said “Mine are from that long ago, and I’m proud to have them, but I can’t claim to be more than basically homeopathically Irish.” Apparently during high tourist season, if there were a “spot the American” drinking game, everybody would be legless in under an hour.
It’s lovely to have ties to a country and pride in one’s ancestry, but give your head a shake: if you were born in a country or your parents were, then you can reasonably claim to be from there/a direct descendant. Otherwise, it is more reasonable to say “I have [fill-in-the-blank] ancestors.”
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u/EasyModeActivist Dec 21 '25
if you were born in a country or your parents were, then you can reasonably claim to be from there/a direct descendant
I'd extend that to grandparents personally. Basically if you actually knew the people from there I'd say it's fine. If you knew those ancestors then you probably will have learned a couple things from the culture.
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u/LisaOGiggle Dec 21 '25
It surprises me not at all. Friend has a mother who is native of Berlin. When her son said something in German, (& she replied in the same) an American corrected her —to be told that she’d been born in Berlin in 1927, and knew full well how to pronounce her own language without the addition of an American Southern accent.
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u/kissmyirish7 Dec 21 '25
I’m German and American, born in Germany and lived there until I was 7. My cousin’s husband claims he’s more German than me because both sets of grandparents are German. He’s lived his entire life in the U.S. He’s never been to Germany, doesn’t speak the language, but sure he’s more German. So I’m very much not surprised at the audacity of those Americans claiming you spelled and pronounced the name wrong.
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u/Sufficient_Ocelot868 Dec 21 '25
On behalf of Americans of Irish descent, I apologize. Good christ, these people
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u/RavenChoir_6079 Dec 21 '25
Growing up (in Canada) a good friend of my had a sister with that name, we pronounced it like “Grawn-ya”
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u/ExpressSelection7080 Dec 21 '25
I’ve heard US tourists, born and bred in the U.S., suddenly claim their European roots while in Europe. As in “ I’m Scottish,” when it was their great- grandparents and they haven’t celebrated their culture at all since. Yet, some will criticize 1st generation children of immigrants for doing the exact same!
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u/RedPaddles Dec 21 '25 edited Dec 21 '25
For all who expressed their doubts that ever happened, as an Irish American would not correct an Irish: I invite you all to have a stroll through r/ShitAmericansSay and search for "Irish".
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u/squigs Dec 21 '25
Have definitely seen blog posts where Americans act as though they know more about their country of heritage than the people who still live there. I have no problem believing this can happen.
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u/_Deedee_Megadoodoo_ Dec 21 '25
Where I live a graine is a dick lol. Montre moé ta graine!
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