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Dragon Age: How those Irish names should really be pronounced.

Perhaps you didn't realise it but a lot of the "fantasy" character names in Dragon age are actually common Irish names of Celtic Origin. Quite fitting I think given the Celtic links to the Arthurian legends. Unfortunately (if you are Irish like me) the game developers chose to go with an Anglicised pronunciation of the names that sounds completely wrong to an Irish ear. Of course it is just a game and they are entitled to pronouce the words any way they like but if you are interested in the "correct" Irish pronunciations here are some of the ones I spotted:

Eamon: should be  "Ayemon" not "Eee-mon"  (I have a brother called Eamon so I should know :) )
Riordan:  should be "Reardun" not "Reeoredan"
Niall: should be "Nile" or perhaps "Neel" but not "N-eye-al"
Fergus: should be "Fur-gus" (don't remember how it is pronounced in game)
Connor: Well its just "Connor", I think they got this one right :)
Bodhan: should be "budan" Can't remember what they did with this.

There were a few others that I can't remember now but it is clear to me that the scriptwriters used a lits of common Irish names as one of their inspirations.It is interesting to note that they have generally used modern spelling suggesting they used a list of modern Irish names rather than getting names from older celtic legends. 
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Comments

Thallian said…
neat! these'll be great character names for me to draw on in new games :)
11:11 pm
mbp said…
There is certainly a rich thread to draw from in Celtic mythology. In Ireland we have the great Cu Chulain and Fionn McCool saga's but as I have said the King Arthur tales also have Celtic links.

It might make sense to spell the names phonetically to help folks get the pronunciation right although that could the names look more mundane.
9:22 am
Anonymous said…
Did a google search to see if anyone else had been annoyed at DA's mangling of the Irish names, found your blog! ;-)

Another name they used was Caolán (anglicised to Cailin though, I think) though that was more or less right, probably due to the spelling. Makes me think the script authors had zero oversight over the voice recording!
11:34 am
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