Name pronunciation

[Russian Red]

Halò! I would like to ask about my name. You see, the name is either Alena or Alyona. Alyona is a phonetical spelling. The sound yo (Russian - ё) is close to the German ö. I think that the closest sound in Gaelic is represented by ao. Is it right to spell my name like Alaona then?

P.S. My name is pronounced like that - http://ru.forvo.com/word/%D0%B0%D0%BB%D ... %BD%D0%B0/.

Tapadh leibh in advance

[akerbeltz]

I'm afraid not, you cannot have long vowels outside the stressed syllable and not that many short ones either. I presume it's Алёна? Where does the stress go in this name?

[Russian Red]

akerbeltz, ё is always stressed in the Russian language.

[akerbeltz]

In which case it gets complicated. You don't actually have to change your name, I'm sure people are perfectly happy to call you by you own name. It is a bit like insisting Hu Jintao taking a Russian name. It is perhaps relatively to re-spell Jintao in Cyrillic but Gaelic doesn't quite work that way.

To make you name Gaelic, you'd either have to drop the A- or move stress to the first syllable.

[Russian Red]

True! I never thought about the stress. Anyway, thanks for your reply. I was just interested.

[akerbeltz]

'S e do bheatha / You're welcome

[Seonaidh]

You could always try to seek out a Gaelic version of your name. It might help if you knew what an "English version" of your name would be, for instance, is it like "Ellen" or "Helen" or "Alannah" - or what? "Helen", incidentally, is usually rendered into Gaelic as "Eilidh".