Mais justement, there isn't a diphthong in 'père', (there is in Occitan - paire - but that's another language). The diphthong has been added on to it by English speakers.

Thanks for all the comments and understanding for the name Shane.  I have a surname of Shanes and am wondering what that would mean as to our original emigrants' (two brothers) actual surname. 

I see your discussion of Seain but don't know if that is an actual surname found in Ulster.  And if so, does it mean "son of"? 

I assume my original emigrants were Scotch-Irish as they came from Ireland during the 1760s.  Initially, in America, people wrote the brothers' name down as Shins and sometimes just Shinn based on how they understood the name.  It became Shanes soon afterward in the generations that followed and has remained such.  

You could probably have opened a new topic for this.

Shanes seems to be a variant of the more common surname, Shane, with an excrescent s added the end. It is a variant particular to Ulster, specifically Co. Down, as far as I can tell, though obviously it has travelled since originating there.

As for the base form, Shane as a surname is itself a shortened variant of McShane, which is an Anglicised form of the Irish surname, Mac Seáin. Note the mark of length above the á, which changes the pronunciation of the vowel.

Thanks so much for your comments.  I am new to this forum and really appreciate the information.  I did know that the fada would be over the "a" but didn't know how to do so using my laptop. 

Could you please tell me how you think my emigrant brothers would have pronounced their name?  I don't have any documents in which they actually wrote down their name (in Irish or otherwise) as their name was generally recorded by someone else based on what they heard.

Also do you think I would ever be able to trace them back to a family in Down County? 

It is quite possible to trace them but you would need to do a bit of work/digging. One significant factor is the 'when'. You stated brothers. By this, do you mean actual brothers or distant relatives?

If you want to trace them and assuming you are in the US (apologies for this assumption, if I'm wrong!), then your biggest asset are your US records because US records are notoriously good for details (place of birth, name of parents, address of residency in home country etc.).

1. Find out the name and approximate year of birth of your McShane / Shane(s) of your first generation ancestor.
2. Review any records about that person to try to identify where said person comes from.
3. Once you have an area of birth or at least a name and an approximent year of birth, you can start searching for that person (or parents of that person etc.) in Ireland.

If those people were alive and in Ireland between 1901/1911, you are in luck because there are census records. There are almost no other census records in Ireland other than those as they were destroyed in a fire.

4. You can use alternative documents: passenger records, griffith valuation (amazing set of records if you learn how to navigate them!) etc.

Or, alternatively, do a DNA test with Ancestry or similar and find common matches in Ireland and connect the dots.

Hope that helps.

I would hazard a guess that they'd have pronounced it in English in the same way as you'd pronounce it today.

You will almost certainly not be able to trace them in Irish records. Your best bet is US records. Irish records are patchy - partly because of the destruction (in the Irish Civil War -- the Irish government troops who had signed a treaty with Britain bombarded IRA men holed up on the Four Courts site who were opposed to it) of Irish records in 1922. I have Co. Down ancestors too, but the most likely thing is that Griffiths Valuations will show people of the same name in the relevant area, but without any information as to whether they are your direct ancestors or not. Wills are mainly relevant only for the Protestant population - and I think the wills were destroyed too, but not the will calendars. Roman Catholic church records are largely unavailable before 1800 (you can try searching at https://registers.nli.ie/). Ireland does not have the records available that other countries have. I have done 23andme - it's good enough to tell me I have Irish ancestors and which general areas.

I think this is a safe answer. If you have the name variant with the excrescent s, this suggests that your last ancestors in Ireland were already using that form of the name in English, and pronounced it more or less the way you probably do today.

Obviously, though, at some point your ancestors would have been Gaelic-speaking. This was likely not very long before leaving Ireland, whenever that may have occurred. They would likely have used the form Mac Seáin. This is pronounced mak SHOYNE (rhymes with Boyne). The emphasis is on the "shoyne" part, hence the capital letters. The "mak" part is almost enclitic, as with English names starting with "Mc".

Er.. not pronounced Shoyne! If you listen to feadóg stáin at https://www.teanglann.ie/en/fuaim/fead% ... st%c3%a1in and pick the Ulster variant, the vowel is like the vowel in the English word "cat", but longer.

Think you need to be more specific there. In Ulster it may not be pronounced like Shoyne, but that doesn't mean the word cannot be pronounced that way. Munster pronunciation of stáin in your link absolutely rhymes with how I would pronounce Boyne, ergo Shoyne is a perfectly valid pronunciation.

I can see, given the name seems to be of Ulster origins, why an Ulster pronunciation might be preferable in this case, but I'm not going to be giving people Ulster pronunciations. I'm in no position to as it's the dialect I've had the least interaction with.