Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/03/17/irish-names-marked-as-typos-tech-companies-diversity-failure.html
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I’m lucky that while my name is unusual it’s pretty straightforward, the worst I get is the last vowel being stretched too much. But my brother’s name uses mh, which makes a v sound in Irish and he spells it phonetically in most places to make it easier for people to figure out how to say it.
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“But Welsh spellings are as nothing compared with Irish Gaelic, a language in which spelling and pronunciation give the impression of having been devised by separate committees, meeting in separate rooms, while implacably divided over some deep semantic issue."
– Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue
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There’s also the issue of varied Anglicized spellings of names with Gaelic roots (also, my phone literally just autocorrected ‘Gaelic’ to ‘Garlic’). The surnames McCoy, McCaughey, McHugh (maybe), and McGough are all from the same name. They all probably came from Mac Eocaidh.
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Can’t talk about systems being bad with names without posting You Know What.
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To a certain extent i have had to deal with non-Hispanic points of view on my two last names, which is common for Hispanics. I’ve had my two last names hyphenated by the DMV, which is legally and factually incorrect as that’s not what’s on my birth certificate. I’ve also had my second last name used as my primary one. Thankfully these things don’t come up a lot but it is still annoying when it does and i can imagine folks from certain countries and cultures dealing with similar circumstances or more extreme versions of this issue.
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:: sigh :: Yeah, I had to add my surname to the computer’s dictionary at every new job.
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As someone with an unusual name, and being old enough to remember when no names were included in spellcheck, I had no idea that this was a thing.
The issue with computers and Irish names I’ve been warned about before is that if programmers don’t sanitise their database inputs properly, Irish surnames starting with O’ will terminate strings in the middle, leading to all sorts of fun.
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Bobby O’ Tables?
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I’m amazed that, when people try to spell Malarkey, they invariably start, “M-A-R…” The name has been Anglicized many different ways - typically:
Malarkey
Malarky
Mullarkey
In old census reports, I’ve seen it spelled Melarky and Milarky.
My mom used to say that names ending in “ey” were Catholic, and the “y” ending were Protestant. No clue about that.
At least it’s easily pronounced no matter the spelling in the US.
Sunday ramblings and musings. Mostly Malarkey! 
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I’m shocked, shocked, that the eagerness of tech outfits to have an Irish HQ might not translate into much actual knowledge of anything aside from the jurisdiction’s interesting tax code.
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I was on the reception desk at the Dublin Worldcon, and regularly had enthusiastic young women come up and say “I’m Eefra Murphy” and I’d have to say “I’m really sorry, but I am very English. How is that spelt? Aiofe? Ok, I’ve found your details”
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Similarly, I was always told names beginning with ‘Mc’ were Irish and ones beginning with ‘Mac’ were Scottish. That is often, but not always, true. And then there are the Scots-Irish, which is kind of a made up demographic. Well…more made up than most. I suppose you could argue that all demographic divisions are made up in a way.
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So whisky (Scottish spelling) is Protestant and whiskey is Catholic? Checks out.
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And then there were my great-great-great-great (I think) grandparents, who were Irish traveller immigrants in Scotland, and definitely not Scots-Irish.
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Yeah, the term Scots-Irish was largely invented by the first wave of Irish immigrants in the US, who were largely Protestant and became farmers. Originally, they just called themselves Irish. Then, when the potato famine caused another wave of Irish immigration, this time largely Catholic, with immigrants concentrated in big cities like Boston and New York, the earlier Irish wanted everyone to understand that they weren’t like “those” Irish. They were the good ones! So they invented the term Scots-Irish. In short, people have always sucked.
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Ulster Scots?
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Yes, that’s them. But at the time the came to the US, they didn’t call themselves that. They just called themselves Irish. But yes, they largely came from Ulster, modern day Northern Ireland, they were largely Protestant, and a lot of them had moved to Ireland from Scotland a century or two before they started coming to the US. However, some of those had also been in Ireland before they ended up in Scotland. Just like a lot of Gaelic people. It’s all very mixed up. It’s not like it’s a separate ethnicity.
ETA: I know all this because these are my ancestors. My family left County Down for the American colonies in 1770, and settled in Mecklenberg County in the Carolinas. But my last name is also very, very Irish in origin. Not Scottish. It’s one of those names I mentioned in my first comment. It derives from an ancient Irish name. It is definitely not Scottish in origin, so while some of my family may have been in Scotland at some point before they settled in Ulster, they must have come from Ireland before that.
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Quite poor from Bryson. Irish pronunciation, unlike English is very consistent. There was in fact a committee to standardise Irish spellings.
English on the other hand is completely inconsistent and a total mess. For example: Though, thought, through, trough.
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In 40 years living in Ireland as an Irish person i have never encounted the name “Malarkey” or anything close to it.
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