Comments for the name Aoife

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.

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!

Very pretty name, I like it much.

One of the most common names in Ireland - along with Ciara, Roisin and Aisling. I much prefer the English version Eve.

Very, very beautiful name, I love it!

One of the contestants on 'How do you solve a problem like Maria?'. She didn't win, Connie did.

Gorgeous Irish name, I really like it.

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

*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.

It's said ee-fa.
The names on this site tend to have the pronunciation listed right under. :)

Good luck teaching your kid to read. :)

For the darker side of Aoife see King Lir's second wife who was a beautiful witch and turned all 4 of Lir's children into swans condemned to fly for 900 years.
Still a beautiful name and worthy of any sorcerer.

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.

This is a beautiful name with a great meaning & history. However, I wish to pronounce it right. I have gone to several sites and been given eefa, eefah, eefeh. Should I pronounce the fa like far, or fa like beginning of fa ctory, or feh like fe tch me the ball?

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.

Living in Ireland personally, I've only ever heard this name pronounced "EE-fuh". The "a" at the end of Aoife is like the "a" at the end of Sarah or Veronica.

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).

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.