A Starbucks in Cork City has a cheat sheet to help employees pronounce and spell Irish names.
Staff at a Starbucks store on Prince's Street in Cork City have written out an extensive list of Irish names and their phonetic pronunciations to help baristas avoid mispronouncing or misspelling customers' names.
The list includes popular Irish names, such as Aoife (pronounced ee-fa), Caoimhe (kwee-va), Tadhg (tie-g), and Ruairi (Rory), Cork Beo reported.
Starbucks is renowned for misspelling and mispronouncing names, with some customers finding the faux pas amusing and others finding it a little irksome to have their name mispronounced.
"If you haven't worked behind a Starbucks counter, you'd be surprised as to how noisy it is compared to the front of the counter, where customers order," one former Starbucks barista wrote on Quora.
Meanwhile, an old Twitter account, @namestarbucks, used to share some of the most well-intentioned but still woefully misspelled Irish names.
A solid attempt at Conor! 😂😂🙈🙈 #irish #irishnames https://t.co/3bvSwYf6ie pic.twitter.com/GYqOpSpOK9
— IrishStarbucksNames (@namestarbucks) February 9, 2016
Of course, Irish names can also be extremely difficult to pronounce for people who are not familiar with the Irish language.
Considering many people who move to Ireland from abroad are likely to pick up retail jobs in stores like Starbucks, it stands to reason that foreign staff will get a helping hand when dealing with Irish-sounding names.
A recent study found that the Irish name Aoife is the hardest word for British people to say, with Niamh and Siobhan also in the top ten.
The study, commissioned by casino operator Slotbox, found that a total of four Irish names appeared in the top ten most difficult words for British people to pronounce, with Saoirse ranking as the second-most difficult word for Brits.
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