The final irony of my much-mangled Irish name

‘Who wants to spend the first five minutes of a meeting with stressed City clients arguing about one’s name? I gave up.’ Photograph: Tony Tallec/Alamy

Re Niamh Ní Hoireabhaird’s article (There is a surefire way for the English to correctly pronounce Irish names. Just ask us. Niamh Ní Hoireabhaird, Opinion, 23 February), I had little problem with my name, Colm, growing up in Wales. My dad, from Killarney, stressed that the name should be “Cullum”, but everyone called me “Collum”, or “Col”, so I stuck with that.

It was only when I went to uni, then worked in the civil service in London, that I encountered confusion. The English could not master (or did not want to master?) this simple pronunciation, and I heard the same old “joke” many times: “Doric or Ionic?” With The Lord of the Rings came a new “joke” – Gollum. They also mocked everything Welsh language-wise.