Bear in mind that the people who write/mark up webpages aren't usually as fussy about grammar/punctuation/spelling as certain bearers of the names in question.
My own first name is Irish (but with no accents) and people invariably misspell it, substituting a terminal 'gh' for the correct 'ch'. But I'm too busy flinching at errors elsewhere in their writing to worry about it! Most recent example was from a (final-year languages) student who wrote about how such-and-such could be stated 'without fear of exaduration'...
Bear in mind that the people who write/mark up webpages aren't usually as fussy about grammar/punctuation/spelling as certain bearers of the names in question.
Yes - but if so many site owners went to the trouble of spelling it Mícheál then it would seem to suggest that there's something in it...
My own first name is Irish (but with no accents) and people invariably misspell it, substituting a terminal 'gh' for the correct 'ch'. But I'm too busy flinching at errors elsewhere in their writing to worry about it! Most recent example was from a (final-year languages) student who wrote about how such-and-such could be stated 'without fear of exaduration'...
Yeah - I read recently about a football club attempting to "affray" the costs associated with a high security game. Without meaning to be precious about it I sometimes wonder about our education system when basic literacy (e.g. correct word usage, basic spelling and punctuation etc.) seems to be such a problem for so many people...
...and yet it's claimed here that 'Ireland's 15-year-olds are the second most literate in the EU'. I can only assume that they disimprove upon entry to higher education!
As for the 'Micheál vs. Mícheál' debate - it may well be that both options are permissible. A bit like 'y'haw!' vs. 'yee-haaaaw!'...?
Search for "exaduration" on google and it throws up quite a few (although by google standards maybe not that many) hits.
Anyway, to get back to my original simple question (who knew it would spark debate), in the end we went with Micheál. The person we were writing to uses a full Irish name and always has done as far as I know. I'm sure he'll mention it for future reference if we got it wrong.