Barry Keoghan is intrigued by the art of naming. The actor from "The Banshees of Inisherin" has sparked public curiosity about the pronunciation of his Irish surname, and he was elated when BBC Radio 1's Greg James correctly pronounced it as "Kee-oh-gan."
"Every time I say it on the radio," Greg began during Barry's appearance on "The Breakfast Show" on March 11, "people insist, 'It's not Kee-OH-gan.' And I reply, 'It is!'" Barry inquired about who might be spreading the incorrect pronunciation, with Greg joking that it was "everyone."
However, according to Barry, "Until a Keoghan tells you it's not how you say it, well then you know." Greg found himself particularly vexed when people would advise him not to "pronounce the -eogan," exclaiming, "Yeah, you do pronounce the 'eogan!'"
As for how the radio DJ remembered how to say Barry's last name, Greg quipped that after watching the end of 2023's "Saltburn," in which Barry went full frontal, Greg had been "talking about Barry's Ke-oh-gan for a long time." "So it works better," he explained. "If you're saying, 'I'm looking at Barry's Kee-gan,' it's not quite the same." Barry agreed, quipping, "No, Kee-gan is wrong. It sounds like an infection."
The 33-year-old has long contended with mispronunciations of his last name. "Some people get it wrong," he told Variety in 2024. "I mean, even Irish people get it wrong." Still, he could understand where the confusion came from, explaining that "K-E-O-G-H" is typically pronounced as "Kee-oh." "So if you add an 'A-N,' [people think] it's 'Kee-own,'" Barry said. "But we pronounce the G."
Fortunately, the Oscar nominee has found that having a more interesting surname might have aided his career. "I find that if you have a difficult to pronounce name," Barry shared with Geek Ireland in 2022, "you're more likely to go far, especially in the U.S." "Like Saoirse Ronan and all the talk of how to pronounce her name," he said. "So maybe it's a benefit having a peculiar name."
