First… Thank you for asking! It’s always fun for me to talk about words and language. 😊 I was recently asked this again, and I decided to capture my response for everybody because this is not the first time somebody has wondered about my name with no vowels!

Okay, the ‘sometimes y’ vowel sorta counts, but you couldn’t imagine how many telemarketers call me trying to pronounce “STCYR” from their stolen database records.

So how DO you say it?

When a French speaker says the name, it winds up sounding a like like “sincere” in English (a little more “sain” then “sin”). In English I usually introduce myself saying it like “Saint Sear”.

This Google Translate audio is really good for it, actually. Try clicking both the English and the French audio sounds!

So let’s talk history…

It’s a French name, with a very long history. The “St” part is the shortened abbreviation for ‘Saint’, and ‘Cyr’ is the name of the saint, actually shortened from ‘Cyricus‘, who died about 1800 years ago. That led to France using the Saint Cyr name a lot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Cyr

It’s not a hugely popular name, especially my particular variation with the hyphen, but I see it pop up here and there, particularly referencing things in Canada, France, or Louisiana (hundreds of years ago a group split off and went south). My own personal family line is actually a bit of an imposter. We’ve used the name St-Cyr for a few hundred years in Canada, but my uncle did some digging into the history and it turns out we were actually a completely different family line from France who decided to switch names for some reason.

Probably to avoid authorities, is the story I like to tell. YARR! THAR BE PIRATES!

I am a little fuzzy on all the details, but ultimately it’s a very old name with French origin.

How about you?

Do you have a cool name history? Drop it in the comments, as they say!