Becoming a Mayo Man.

I made an interesting discovery tonight. I’ve mentioned before that, although not incontrovertibly proven, there’s little room for doubt that my male ancestry came from Ireland, probably in the 19^th century. Further, that my birth name – Godwin – was almost certainly an Anglicisation of the Irish family name O’Goidín. I’ve also mentioned that as a child I was fascinated by the name of Connemara (a region in the north west of the Irish Republic.) The name felt warm, comfortable and homely to me, which I always thought a minor mystery because down at my level of English working class society, Ireland was rarely mentioned and nobody I knew had ever been there.

Tonight I discovered a website written by a clergyman – presumably Irish – who had researched old Irish family names and produced a minor opus on the subject. It included O’Goidín, and he said that the name still exists in County Mayo. The southern boundary of Mayo borders the region known as Connemara.

So there you have it: might I now be almost entitled to call myself a Mayo man? The only thing I now need to know is how O’Goidín is pronounced in Irish. Any assistance on this matter would be much appreciated. The question returns nothing in Google.