Cillian Murphy’s Name, The Irish Alphabet & Chocolate Chip Cookies

There are many things I learn from Cillian Murphy, the Oscar-winning actor, whenever I read or watch him being interviewed - about art, how to be a thoughtful person and, of course, his beloved Ireland. In his interview with Podcast Host Josh Horowitz on Happy Sad Confused, he talked about the pronunciation of his name. He said his first name has a C at the beginning because Ireland’s alphabet does not have the letter K. (Cillian means "war strife or church" in Irish.)

The Irish C always has the hard K sound. (This is not counting Anglicization.) It never makes the S sound that it does in English, with words like racing, center and city. So, having a K in the alphabet would be redundant. (The letter was rarely used in Latin either.) But not to worry, K. It’s not just you.

Indeed, the modern Irish alphabet or An Aibítir (pronounced un ab-ih-cheer), uses the same Latin characters as English, but has only 18 letters. (As a reminder, the English alphabet has 26 letters.) Besides K, the other letters missing from the Irish alphabet are J, Q, V, W, X, Y, and Z. However, the lucky letters that do make the cut in Ireland are: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, and u.

Irish names like Cillian, which was the ninth most popular name for boys born in Ireland in 2025, are one of my favorite ways to learn about the country. I like to study their meanings and I feel so proud of myself when after much practice with Alexa +, I finally get the poetic pronunciations right, or more accurately, I don’t mangle them anymore. I’m also learning Irish through Duolingo. It’s mostly words like siúcra (sugar) and go raibh maith agat (thank you). Hopefully, at some point I will thank someone in Irish for loaning me their sugar, which I will use to bake biscuits - what most Americans like myself call cookies, unless they are chocolate chip cookies. We’re both on the same page with word choice and scrumptiousness with those. (Unlike Mr. Murphy’s unfair cinnamon accusation toward Americans. See the podcast.) That’s cookie with a hard K - that sound that both English and Irish speakers have in common.