Dia dhuit,

My wife loves the name Pádraig and we are expecting a boy. But my ancestral tree shows a Páraic too. So, I tried Google searching and seems that they both mean "Patrick"? Also, how is "Páraic" pronounced?

Thank you so much!
Daniel

The name Patrick can be written several different ways in Irish: Pádhraig, Pádhraic, Pádraig, and Pádraic, but I've never heard of "Páraic". It may be dialectical, but I suspect it is someone's attempt to write it the way that it is pronounced in some parts of Ireland.

The two main pronunciations are "PAW-ric" and "PAW-dric". I'm not sure that there is a clear geographical difference, but in my experience "PAW-ric" is more common in the south, and "PAW-dric" is more common in the north and east (I'm not sure about Conamara). In theory, given the rules of Irish orthography, the spellings Pádhraig and Pádhraic should be pronounced "PAW-ric" and the spellings Pádraig and Pádraic should be pronounced "PAW-dric" , but people are not always consistent in sticking to that. The "g" and the "c" at the end should be pronounced the same (more or less a "k" sound), but I've heard people emphasize the "g", although that may happen only with non-native Irish speakers.

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I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.

Thanks so much for this!

The spelling "Páraic" is found in Connemara, as well as "Pádraic", but the D isn't pronounced here.