Why did you give that white baby a black name?

This is quite possibly the funniest, and least predicted, culture clash ... yet inoffensive ... we'll ever experience.

Marcy brought our daughter, Saoirse, into work so that her co-workers could meet her. The 2-month old was fawned over by the predominately female staff.

Now, I should also point out that we enjoy telling Americans her name, and explaining how to pronounce it and its origin. We joke with friends that we'll only tell them how to pronounce her name once, and if they can repeat it correctly the next day, they win a prize. No one has come to claim it!! Irish vowels make explaining this difficult, but the closest I can give you is: Say-er-sha; with 'Say-er' being one syllable ... and 'sha' ending more in an 'eh'. It's an Irish word that translates to Freedom.

This is a big set-up for a short story, but basically one of Marcy's Black co-workers honestly asked (on hearing the name spoken alone), "Why did you give that white baby a black name?" Given that we generally hear an indignant, "Why did you give her such a difficult name? You'll have to teach her to spell it," this was refreshing. [Side-note: of course we have to teach her how to spell her name. Sure we'll have to spell it to everyone who meets her. But considering (as noted before) we already have to spell her sur(family)name, and our first names, we're used to it.]

An explanation to our Irish friends: there is an interesting trend where old irish names are being adopted into the African-American culture, albeit perhaps a little unwittingly, and with significantly different spelling. That said, I could be wrong, and it just be a co-incidence. But let me introduce you to exhibit A and B.

My sister's name is Ciara. European-America's have twisted it's spelling to Kiera to better line-up it's pronunciation with English syllabi than Irish. Now, there is a hip-hop artist, who uses the Irish spelling, but pronounces her name as Sierra - a more English pronunciation of the Irish spelling.

Marcy's grandmother's name is Duana - the female equivalent of Duane, both in their Irish forms [Dwayne and Duwanna for those looking for something closer to the phonetics]. Marcy's conversation with the same co-worker also lead to a similar, "That's a Black name" comparison.

Rather than been accused of making our daughter's life difficult for giving her an ethnic name - okay no-one has put it those terms, but we can read in between the lines - it's nice to have a example of culture's mixing in the United States. We're very proud of our daughter's name and it's meaning. Names are supposed to be important and have meaning, and we're glad Saoirse's will evoke honest questions about differences and similarities in cultures.