I grew up in Scotland and am surrounded by Ruaridh's, Sionbhan's, Muireall's and Iain's. The vast majority of the Scottish population have zero knowledge of gaelic, only around 1% of us are fluent speakers who actually use the language. You get used to seeing the spellings though.

Most of those names were said for a LONG LONG time before they were written down. So really the spelling, even the oldest "traditional" spelling, is completely arbitrary - it's just what the first person to write the name down thought it should look like which is why there are variations between countries of origin even when the name sounds the same, and for all we know they could have been adding or omitting letters for the sake of fashion too.

I do sometimes think it's being taken a bit far, given, as BW said, the name sounds exactly the same spoken but if it makes people happy to give random spellings then that's fairly harmlss as craziness goes (remember little Aryan Nation?). I know a bryahn (brian), a meekaila (michaela), a sharlottah (charlotte - german pron.), a kaytea (katy). But then at least those ARE names. Does anyone remember the judge allowing a girl in America to change her name because her parents had called her, on her BIRTH certificate, "Tallulah-Does-The-Hula-In-Hawaii"?

DD's name is rare but traditionally spelled and very common amonst 80-year old women and still, no one can spell it. I think the world is so big now, people come into contact with so many variations on spellings that no-one even tries to think anymore, they just automatically ask "and how are you spelling that?"

Bx