Pronouncing Fire Emblem's Irish names

[Jotari]

I had an experience with a random stranger mispronouncing an Irish word to me the other day so it's prompted me to educate all you folks about how some of the Irish names Fire Emblem throws around are really pronunced. Well, at least in English. If you're actually speaking Irish with Irish inflection and accent then there will be slight differences with phonemes that just aren't existent or common in English, but these amateur pronunciations I'm about to show you will be far more accurate than you're initial assumption looking at the spellings.

First one up are the twins Raigh and Lugh. I think most people actually do know how to say these names because the Heroes voice actors actually get them right and the fan translations had more phonetic names. Basically, ignore the gh. Their names are Ray and Lu. Lugh is a pagan god, I don't think Raigh is anything, they just kept the same spelling for the whole twin theming.

Next up is probably the most immediately incomprehensible one for someone who hasn't heard it spoken. Leo's bow in Radiant Dawn, Lughnasadh. Same rules as Lugh above apply, so you can ignore the gh. And I'm not sure if this is conicidence or not, given it is a harvest festival, but that leaves us with "Luna". The dh we're similarly going ignore, leaving us with Luna-sa.

Edward also gets an Irish inspired weapon with Caladbolg. Honestly though I think this one is pronounced pretty phonetically. I can't remember hearing this actually spoken aloud in Ireland. For as metal as it is as a weapon (it cleaves mountains), it seems far more popular as a random strong weapon for video games than in mythology (though I'm no means an expert). Nolan's weapon, Tarvos, is also Irish inspired, but it's the Latin name of a Celtic god. Ideally they should have called is Tarbh, pronunced Tarv.

Next are the four provinces of Northern Thracia. Leonster, Munster, Ulster and Conote. These are the four ancient kingdoms of Ireland and today are the four provinces of Ireland. Though Leonster and Conote should be Leinster and Connacht. I'm actually a bit surprised they misspelled those two, as they are pretty accurate to spelling in most cases (sometimes beyond reason as has been discussed in some threads). Leinster, should pronounced Len-stir and Connacht should be pronounced Con-oct. Munster and Ulster are pretty phonetic.

Before moving on to playable characters, I'm actually going to talk about a non playable character that (I think) doesn't have a localized name yet. That being Eldigan's wife, whom the wikis and fan translations call Grahnye. Which is an accurate phonetic pronunciation of the name, but not how it's ever spelled as an actual name in real life (at least commonly). If we get a remake of Genealogy and she appears, she will probably be called Gráinne. But it should still be pronounced Grah-nya and not Grainy.

Now on to playable characters of Jugdral, of which there's quite a few. I'm going to skip over once like Deirdre that, I hope, are pretty obvious, and just focus on the ones that are a little less obvious. The first is Chulainn, who is named after the most famous Irish hero, Cu Chulainn. It's actually slightly surprising they gave this name to such a minor character. Anyway it should be pronounced Cullen, yeah, like the vampire family from Twilight.

Next up is Sigurd's buddy Naoise. This is probably one of the least obvious ones, but I can provide you a point of reference. I direct you to the rather popular Irish actor Saoirse Ronan whose name you might have heard pronounced out loud. It's Seer-sha. We have a lot of the same phonetics going on with Naoise, just a different first letter an an extra 'r'. It other words, Naoise should be pronunced Nee-sha.

Next up is Brigid. This one is actually pretty simple, to the extent that most people are probably pronouncing it correctly already. You just have to remember that the 'g' is soft and not hard. So it's like bri-jid. 

Next up is another one of the less obvious one that the poor heroes voice actors must have had absolutely no direction on. The wielder of the mighty Pugi, Osian. I assure you this name sounds absolutely nothing like the wore Ocean. No, it's actually pronunced more like Uh-sheen. 

For the next one we're going to take a brief departure from Jugdral and head over to Sacred Stones, with the ambitious mercenary Caellach. This is another one where they got the spelling wrong, so you there's some kind of excuse for pronunciation, it should be Ceallach, with the 'e' and the 'a' reversed.  They call him Kellig in Heroes, which actually isn't too bad, but it's more like Kay-lock or Ka-lock.

Next up is Kaga's favourite place name, or at least the one he chose for his company, as well as a location in Jugdral, Tirnanog. This one is particularly funny because it's spelled right (minus missing diacritics), but it's actually a phrase in Irish that they crammed into one word. Kind of like taking "The United States" and turning it into "Theunitedstates". Really it should be "Tir Na nOg". It means land of the ever young. Tir, the word for land, is pronunced like tear, as in tears when you cry. Og is the word for young or youth (the extra 'n' in front of it is some grammatical rule), it's pronunced with a longer 'O' sound (and by rights should have a fodda, but I can't be assed making my keyboard able to print such characters). So it's not like Ogg, a sterotypical caveman name or a Discworld Witch, it's more like the word Rogue only without the R. So I guess to render it in full phonetics, Tirnanog would be Tear Nah Nogue.

The last two I'm going to talk about are a pair that you've seen me complaining about in a few threads. Iuchar and Iucharbra, these are two pretty obscure characters from Irish mythology that I didn't even realize were meant to be Irish at first, and even when I found out I was a bit at a loss as to how to pronounce them. Then I remembered the word for July in Irish is Iuil, which I do know how to pronunce (it's like the uhhh sound you used when you're impressed, which is hard to render since uhhh also looks like a sound made when you're not impressed), so that got me the first syllable. After that it just taking a typical ch sound, which is hard in Irish (kind of like the German "Bach"). So these guys should be pronunced, and this is going to be difficult to render phonetically, something like Uwh-khar and Uwh-kar-brah.

This is not an exhaustive list of Irish names in Fire Emblem, there are a lot more out there, but I think they're generally easy to pronounce, or they're just so obscure I haven't even realized they're Irish or just don't know the authentic pronunciation. Of course I grew up with a lot of these phonetics, so what seems obvious to pronounce for me might not be for everyone else. So if there are any names from the series you know are Irish but don't know how to pronounce, do ask and I'll do my best.

And on an unrelated note, never forget the S in Camus silent.

[lenticular]

Requesting pronunciation guides for Lúin and Areadbhar, please!

[Jotari]

21 minutes ago, lenticular said:

Requesting pronunciation guides for Lúin and Areadbhar, please!

The fodda on the U makes it a longer sound. So rather than something like 'Lune', it's 'Lu-inn'. Meanwhile the main thing for Areadbhar is that the 'bh' makes a 'v' sound. So it should be something like A-red-var. They actually pronunce them correctly in Three Houses.

Spoiler

 

That Areadbhar video seems to have been uploaded precisely because people were confused by the pronunciation XD 

On the subject of mythical lances, yes, Gae Bolg is pronunced like the word 'gay'. It's the most fabulous of all lances.

Edited May 5, 2022 by Jotari

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

Whew, this is great! Thank you for this Hibernian rundown.

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

First one up are the twins Raigh and Lugh. I think most people actually do know how to say these names because the Heroes voice actors actually get them right and the fan translations had more phonetic names. Basically, ignore the gh. Their names are Ray and Lu. Lugh is a pagan god, I don't think Raigh is anything, they just kept the same spelling for the whole twin theming.

I believe Raigh, who has also been given the name "Lleu" in past fanslations, is based off of Lleu Llaw Gyffes. Apparently, he's the Welsh counterpart to the Irish Lugh. I don't know how to pronounce Welsh names, unfortunately. I will say that Raigh's Japanese name can be transliterated as "Rei" or "Lei" with equal justification.

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

Edward also gets an Irish inspired weapon with Caladbolg. Honestly though I think this one is pronounced pretty phonetically. I can't remember hearing this actually spoken aloud in Ireland. For as metal as it is as a weapon (it cleaves mountains), it seems far more popular as a random strong weapon for video games than in mythology (though I'm no means an expert). Nolan's weapon, Tarvos, is also Irish inspired, but it's the Latin name of a Celtic god. Ideally they should have called is Tarbh, pronunced Tarv.

"Tarvos" was such an odd naming choice. Not only does it not fit with the other weapons (given its Latin origin), but it's also a name that was previously used for a monster class in Sacred Stones. One that used Axes, sure, but still... weird.

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

Next up is Sigurd's buddy Naoise. This is probably one of the least obvious ones, but I can provide you a point of reference. I direct you to the rather popular Irish actor Saoirse Ronan whose name you might have heard pronounced out loud. It's Seer-sha. We have a lot of the same phonetics going on with Naoise, just a different first letter an an extra 'r'. It other words, Naoise should be pronunced Nee-sha.

TBH I didn't know "Saoirse" was pronounced that way. This... is gonna be one of the harder ones to remember. His Japanese name transliterates to "Noi'shu", so at least the latter consonant matches (a "sh" sound rather than a "s" sound). Quick question - when you say "sha" at the end, are you referring to an "aaa" sound, like in the title "Shah"? Or more of a "schwa" sound, like if you were saying "shut up"? The latter, I'd say, is closer to the original Japanese, but might not match with the Irish name they were going for.

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

Next up is another one of the less obvious one that the poor heroes voice actors must have had absolutely no direction on. The wielder of the mighty Pugi, Osian. I assure you this name sounds absolutely nothing like the wore Ocean. No, it's actually pronunced more like Uh-sheen. 

Gotta love how IS added to the confusion by calling him "Orsin" in Awakening. Interestingly, one transliteration of his Japanese name is "O-shin", which sounds closer to your suggested pronunciation than may be intuitive to English-speakers.

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

For the next one we're going to take a brief departure from Jugdral and head over to Sacred Stones, with the ambitious mercenary Caellach. This is another one where they got the spelling wrong, so you there's some kind of excuse for pronunciation, it should be Ceallach, with the 'e' and the 'a' reversed.  They call him Kellig in Heroes, which actually isn't too bad, but it's more like Kay-lock or Ka-lock.

"Tell me, Renais knights. How much weight... can you handle?"

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

Next up is Kaga's favourite place name, or at least the one he chose for his company, as well as a location in Jugdral, Tirnanog. This one is particularly funny because it's spelled right (minus missing diacritics), but it's actually a phrase in Irish that they crammed into one word. Kind of like taking "The United States" and turning it into "Theunitedstates". Really it should be "Tir Na nOg". It means land of the ever young. Tir, the word for land, is pronunced like tear, as in tears when you cry. Og is the word for young or youth (the extra 'n' in front of it is some grammatical rule), it's pronunced with a longer 'O' sound (and by rights should have a fodda, but I can't be assed making my keyboard able to print such characters). So it's not like Ogg, a sterotypical caveman name or a Discworld Witch, it's more like the word Rogue only without the R. So I guess to render it in full phonetics, Tirnanog would be Tear Nah Nogue.

Minor note - reading "Tear Nah Nogue" on its own is rather confusing. Do I pronounce the "Tear" like "Teardrops on my Guitar", or like "Tearaway Jeans"? I know it's the former, per your earlier explanation. But I wonder if a better way to say it would be "Tier Nah Nogue"? Since that word, unlike "Tear", has a single unambiguous English-language pronunciation. Anyway the Japanese transliteration for this one, "Tirunanogu", seems very close.

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

The last two I'm going to talk about are a pair that you've seen me complaining about in a few threads. Iuchar and Iucharbra, these are two pretty obscure characters from Irish mythology that I didn't even realize were meant to be Irish at first, and even when I found out I was a bit at a loss as to how to pronounce them. Then I remembered the word for July in Irish is Iuil, which I do know how to pronunce (it's like the uhhh sound you used when you're impressed, which is hard to render since uhhh also looks like a sound made when you're not impressed), so that got me the first syllable. After that it just taking a typical ch sound, which is hard in Irish (kind of like the German "Bach"). So these guys should be pronunced, and this is going to be difficult to render phonetically, something like Uwh-khar and Uwh-kar-brah.

"Johan" and "Johalva", got it.

Oh, since you mentioned Chulainn at the start - how should I pronounce "Scáthach"? His original Japanese name transliterates to "Sukasaha", which led to "Skasahar". Is that close enough, or not quite right?

[Jotari]

28 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Whew, this is great! Thank you for this Hibernian rundown.

I believe Raigh, who has also been given the name "Lleu" in past fanslations, is based off of Lleu Llaw Gyffes. Apparently, he's the Welsh counterpart to the Irish Lugh. I don't know how to pronounce Welsh names, unfortunately. I will say that Raigh's Japanese name can be transliterated as "Rei" or "Lei" with equal justification.

I have yet to be convinced that Welsh people know how to pronounce Welsh.

Quote

"Tarvos" was such an odd naming choice. Not only does it not fit with the other weapons (given its Latin origin), but it's also a name that was previously used for a monster class in Sacred Stones. One that used Axes, sure, but still... weird.

Acutally could have been a fun reference if they made all the weapons Monster names. So Leo and Ed could wield Gwyllgi and Maelduin.

Quote

TBH I didn't know "Saoirse" was pronounced that way. This... is gonna be one of the harder ones to remember. His Japanese name transliterates to "Noi'shu", so at least the latter consonant matches (a "sh" sound rather than a "s" sound). Quick question - when you say "sha" at the end, are you referring to an "aaa" sound, like in the title "Shah"? Or more of a "schwa" sound, like if you were saying "shut up"? The latter, I'd say, is closer to the original Japanese, but might not match with the Irish name they were going for.

Shah

Quote

Gotta love how IS added to the confusion by calling him "Orsin" in Awakening. Interestingly, one transliteration of his Japanese name is "O-shin", which sounds closer to your suggested pronunciation than may be intuitive to English-speakers.

I should note that Osian is the genuine spelling, it's just not pronounced that way.

Quote

"Tell me, Renais knights. How much weight... can you handle?"

Minor note - reading "Tear Nah Nogue" on its own is rather confusing. Do I pronounce the "Tear" like "Teardrops on my Guitar", or like "Tearaway Jeans"? I know it's the former, per your earlier explanation. But I wonder if a better way to say it would be "Tier Nah Nogue"? Since that word, unlike "Tear", has a single unambiguous English-language pronunciation. Anyway the Japanese transliteration for this one, "Tirunanogu", seems very close.

I meant to say this in the original post, but did anyone else here ever see that old show Mystic Knights of Tir Na nOg? Saban's attempt to make a Power Rangers show without using any Sentai footage. While, much like Power Rangers, I can't attest to it as having a very deep literary value, it's rather endearing.

Quote

"Johan" and "Johalva", got it.

Oh, since you mentioned Chulainn at the start - how should I pronounce "Scáthach"? His original Japanese name transliterates to "Sukasaha", which led to "Skasahar". Is that close enough, or not quite right?

Basically ignore the 't' and use the long 'a' sound (because there's a fodda). And of course, a hard ch. So, scah-hack. Also of note is that the actual mythological character was female, unlike the Fire Emblem character. She was one of the women who trained Cu Chulainn. She's also the one who gave him the  Gae Bolg lance, so a sword infantry was a bit of a random application. Maybe that's why the localizers wanted to call him Ulster first before they realized that was a bit silly given there's already a place in Jugdral with that name.

Edited May 6, 2022 by Jotari

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

44 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Shah

Huh, thanks for clarifying. 

"Nee-shah" still sounds so peculiar to me. The original devs definitely could've gone with better katakana if that's the sound they wanted. "ニーシァ", for instance, would be "Niisha". Then again, maybe Kaga couldn't pronounce Irish names, either?

44 minutes ago, Jotari said:

meant to say this in the original post, but did anyone else here ever see that old show Mystic Knights of Tir Na nOg? Saban's attempt to make a Power Rangers show without using any Sentai footage. While, much like Power Rangers, I can't attest to it as having a very deep literary value, it's rather endearing.

It also made an appearance in the full title of a game that's never coming out.

44 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Basically ignore the 't' and use the long 'a' sound (because there's a fodda). And of course, a hard ch. So, scah-hack. Also of note is that the actual mythological character was female, unlike the Fire Emblem character. She was one of the women who trained Cu Chulainn. She's also the one who gave him the  Gae Bolg lance, so a sword infantry was a bit of a random application. Maybe that's why the localizers wanted to call him Ulster first before they realized that was a bit silly given there's already a place in Jugdral with that name.

Ah, but that place was previously called "Alster", which is totally different from "Ulster"!

Another place where they could've used different katakana. "スカハック" would turn into "sukaha'ku", or "Skahack". Kind of an interesting mythological blender they put everything through.

Edited May 6, 2022 by Shanty Pete's 1st Mate
Added Niisha

[Jotari]

On 5/6/2022 at 9:52 AM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Huh, thanks for clarifying. 

"Nee-shah" still sounds so peculiar to me. The original devs definitely could've gone with better katakana if that's the sound they wanted. "ニーシァ", for instance, would be "Niisha". Then again, maybe Kaga couldn't pronounce Irish names, either?

Some slack can definitely be cut for a Japanese guy in the 90s. Makes me wonder what his references and sources were. I wonder if he ever actually visited Ireland or the Nordic countries.

Edited March 30 by Jotari

[ping]

8 hours ago, Jotari said:

And on an unrelated note, never forget the S in Camus silent.

I'd like to add that it isn't "Camoo", either. It's too bad that the French "u" doesn't have an English equivalent, as far as I'm aware.

And don't get me started about "é" being transcribed as "ay" all the time. It's one single sound, for fuck's sake!

[Etria]

8 hours ago, Jotari said:

I meant to say this in the original post, but did anyone else here ever see that old show Mystic Knights of Tir Na nOg? Saban's attempt to make a Power Rangers show without using any Sentai footage. While, much like Power Rangers, I can't attest to it as having a very deep literary value, it's rather endearing.

Fuuuuu, that was one of my most favourite shows as a kid. The intro music is legendary (at least the one used in German television, I don't know if other countries had another intro. I believe it still was in English...).

The pronounciation guide is really interesting, though I still don't see the use of silent consonants in language. I mean, why? Were they pronounced once upon a time until people grew tired of them but didn't want to update their spelling? People should do it like Sweden and kick out consonants that are redundant.

[Punished Dayni]

11 hours ago, Jotari said:

Now on to playable characters of Jugdral, of which there's quite a few. I'm going to skip over once like Deirdre that, I hope, are pretty obvious, and just focus on the ones that are a little less obvious. The first is Chulainn, who is named after the most famous Irish hero, Cu Chulainn. It's actually slightly surprising they gave this name to such a minor character. Anyway it should be pronounced Cullen, yeah, like the vampire family from Twilight.

I thought the h isn't silent, so khu-len I think would be more accurate.

7 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

It also made an appearance in the full title of a game that's never coming out.

Barkley's Shut Up

Pretty sad it ended up going the way it did, for those involved and those who contributed funds for nothing..

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Wuchtbrumme Flavia said:

Fuuuuu, that was one of my most favourite shows as a kid. The intro music is legendary (at least the one used in German television, I don't know if other countries had another intro. I believe it still was in English...).

The pronounciation guide is really interesting, though I still don't see the use of silent consonants in language. I mean, why? Were they pronounced once upon a time until people grew tired of them but didn't want to update their spelling? People should do it like Sweden and kick out consonants that are redundant.

Well a lot of them aren't exactly silent. I say ignore the 't' or the 'gh', but that's just for the sake of making them easy to pronounce English renditions. In Irish with the proper annunciation those letters do have a sound, they're just so slight and so nuanced and so unlike English that they can't easily be rendered without everyone taking a course in IPA (which honestly, I think  everyone should, IPA is like the Metric of scripts).

1 hour ago, Dayni said:

I thought the h isn't silent, so khu-len I think would be more accurate.

Again this depends on how authentic you want to go with it, for practical purposes I don't see much difference between the two. If you go around saying Cu Cullen, people will know what you mean. If you say Cuckoo-lane (as I've heard some people say) then you're way off.

[MuteMousou]

The weird thing about all the irish names in the kaga games is that kaga often spells them unusually, which lead to the fandom for the longest time thinking that Chulainn was Holyn (ホリン) (this is how it's specifically spelled in Japanese in the game) since this is a different spelling from How Chu Chulainn is spelled from in other things, (クー・フーリン) but his name is in fact supposed to be Chulainn. There're some other characters affected by this but I can't remember any others right now. This spelling oddity is a common theme throughout basically everything by kaga, such as the unusual spelling of "fire emblem" in katakana (ファイアーエムブレム) as well as spelling the word "mercenary" differently in Berwick Saga (マセネーリ） compared to Thracia (マシナリ) for some reason  

[Azz]

Thank you for this. GotHW has me terrified for its remake because of how it will pronounce all the names lol. I remember I did this one time over the teh FE Reddit page when we first got all the localisations of the GotHW names thanks to choose your legends. They already have Deirdre mispronounced, not excited for Chulainn since its inevitable it'll be said as 'Cú-lane' and now 'Cullen' like it should be lol.

But yeah Irish names can be a bit odd with all the vowels but I think people look at Irish names as if they are English when they aren't.

Also yeah, modern Irish has a lot of redundant consonants in words (namely anytime a 'h' is used anywhere except as the first letter) but it's mainly due to how the language evolved. In old Irish, you would pronounce pretty much every letter. 

Edited May 6, 2022 by Azz

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, MuteMousou said:

The weird thing about all the irish names in the kaga games is that kaga often spells them unusually, which lead to the fandom for the longest time thinking that Chulainn was Holyn (ホリン) (this is how it's specifically spelled in Japanese in the game) since this is a different spelling from How Chu Chulainn is spelled from in other things, (クー・フーリン) but his name is in fact supposed to be Chulainn. There're some other characters affected by this but I can't remember any others right now. This spelling oddity is a common theme throughout basically everything by kaga, such as the unusual spelling of "fire emblem" in katakana (ファイアーエムブレム) as well as spelling the word "mercenary" differently in Berwick Saga (マセネーリ） compared to Thracia (マシナリ) for some reason  

Maybe the characters were never meant to have legitimate mythological names and were meant to have slightly altered discount mythology names.

2 hours ago, Azz said:

Thank you for this. GotHW has me terrified for its remake because of how it will pronounce all the names lol. I remember I did this one time over the teh FE Reddit page when we first got all the localisations of the GotHW names thanks to choose your legends. They already have Deirdre mispronounced, not excited for Chulainn since its inevitable it'll be said as 'Cú-lane' and now 'Cullen' like it should be lol.

But yeah Irish names can be a bit odd with all the vowels but I think people look at Irish names as if they are English when they aren't.

Also yeah, modern Irish has a lot of redundant consonants in words (namely anytime a 'h' is used anywhere except as the first letter) but it's mainly due to how the language evolved. In old Irish, you would pronounce pretty much every letter. 

Deirdre is another one I'm guessing got a weird spelling translated into Japanese, considering fan translations had her as Diadora for years.

I did say in the OP that Deirdre is one I consider obvious, but since it seems there was some trouble somewhere, I'll clarify for everyone that it's Dear-dra, which I would expect for a proper Japanese rendering would come out something like De-ru-du-ra, or maybe just De-du-ra if four syllables is considered too long.

Edited May 6, 2022 by Jotari

[Jotari]

Addendum here, it's almost certainly not intentional but the Archanean nation Gra is the Irish word for love. Which is more funny than anything else given their lack of love for their sister nation. The linguistic false friends also means I probably default to a mispronunciation, as I call them Gr-awe (though as one syllable), when it might actually be Graa like bra or grass. I suppose you'd have to go to the Japanese pronunciation to find out, but I expect in Japanese it's Gu-ra.

Edited May 19, 2022 by Jotari

[UNLEASH IT]

On 5/6/2022 at 6:30 AM, MuteMousou said:

The weird thing about all the irish names in the kaga games is that kaga often spells them unusually, which lead to the fandom for the longest time thinking that Chulainn was Holyn (ホリン) (this is how it's specifically spelled in Japanese in the game) since this is a different spelling from How Chu Chulainn is spelled from in other things, (クー・フーリン) but his name is in fact supposed to be Chulainn. There're some other characters affected by this but I can't remember any others right now. This spelling oddity is a common theme throughout basically everything by kaga, such as the unusual spelling of "fire emblem" in katakana (ファイアーエムブレム) as well as spelling the word "mercenary" differently in Berwick Saga (マセネーリ） compared to Thracia (マシナリ) for some reason  

It's more likely that the Japanese developers didn't know how to pronounce the names either (I believe katakana is phonetic, and mainly used for the transcription of foreign words according to how they are pronounced) and the fan translations just directly translated the katakana. Official translations do this as well, it's how you end up with names like "Belldandy". 

Anyway I think Aoife is pronounced Efa.

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, UNLEASH IT said:

Anyway I think Aoife is pronounced Efa.

Can confirm. With the E being a long sound.