Saoirse

Means freedom or liberty. Not a traditional name. Republican families began using it as a given name in the 1920s, after the Irish War of Independence, as a statement of political conviction. The Central Statistics Office records 1971 as the first year with more than two registered births by that name in the Republic. It entered the top hundred in 1994, the same year the actress Saoirse Ronan was born. Peaked at 12th in 2016. The pronunciation varies by region. Most non-Irish speakers still get it wrong.