Saoirse should not be pronounced Seer-sha!

There’s no correct way to pronounce any word.

Accents differ.

Sair-sha or Sir-sha is how I’ve heard it most said.

There really is a number of ways it can be pronounced but, no doubt, some n’whale-gore from Dundrum will be along to tell us all how to hack it out correctly.

Sayoeeerseh

I think i'd write it sear-sha, as i'd pronounce seer as see-er

Fukushima is pronounced Foo Koosh Ma. Stressed syllable bolded.

Aoire, the Irish for shepherd is pronounced eera. Saoirse is pronounced the same because of the i, seer-sha which is the Irish for freedom. Saor/free or cheap is pronounced sare.

Yer man's English pronunciation isn't great, never mind his Irish!

How else would you pronounce it? HAY is exactly how it should be pronounced!

OK, there's a heap of silent consonants in there, which is a bit confusing - but you don't have to look far for equal confusion in English (cough/bough/rough/though/tough)

No tennis - I'd be more of the opinion that every language has its own foibles.

French (what little I managed to learn in school) has rules, and then about a million exceptions to those rules.

German has a LOT of rules, but them's the rules by and large. Suited my brain far better! And then their fondness for stringing multiple words altogether to make a new one, then flinging the verb at the very end of the sentence by which time you've forgotten how it started.

Spanish has all that guttural throat-clearing stuff going on.

Languages are great! Embrace the differences!

For me a person called Saoirse gets to give their opinion on how its pronounced but a person not called Saoirse needs to do something else with their time

In Irish combinations of 2 or 3 Roman Alphabet vowels are used to make sounds which don't exist in English.

The spoken sounds existed before the monks adapted the Roman alphabet to write it down about 13 to 1400 years ago. Those sounds were not in the other languages this alphabet was developed and used for so couldn't exactly be matched.

Saoirse is one example. Fáilte and Sláinte are two more as is tuí which is not pronounced the same as tí.

They are broad sounds not narrow so Seer-sha is incorrect.

The actual true sounds are in between the sounds of the vowels - if we use their english pronounciation.

Many languages have sounds which don't exist in others, one of my OHs childhood languages has clicks which I can't replicate despite trying.

This is entirely normal, many words or more often names from other languages have to be adapted to make them half-pronouncable to Anglophones.

When English vowels appear in spoken words, they do not always conform to the sound produced when someone recites the alphabet. Even the letter A on its own has two different pronunciatons (by me). My A in GAA is not the same as my A in "A Big House". My E at the start of Elephant is not the same as my E in He.

So any pronunciation guide need phonetics to describe a vowel sound, or a combination of vowels. AI in Hair is not the same as AI in Hail, and there are phonetics to match those AI sounds to guide people when words are more obscure. Personal names and family names I would leave to those who own them. If there is a rule for the AOI sound in Irish names, it should apply to both Saoirse and Aoife.

Where there are variants, I would leave it to the families. There were 212 Saoirse, and 158 Aoife registered in 2022. And some different spelling varieties of names beginning Aoibh. It is up to them how they want to pronounce their own names.

In another discussion, people on Boards were telling families like Gallaghers and Cahills, that they were not pronouncing their own names correctly. Such arrogance.

I think your wrong. It's a name from the irish language not English.

I Worked with a guy once in Australia called Oisin. His Parents were irish australian. He had been called o sheen his whole life. Me and another irish lad were calling him Oisin and one day he went mad at us. We told him he had been called the wrong name his whole life which is true.