I discovered the name Oriah at a young preteen age, it was the authors name on a book I picked up and my first thought had been that ‘this name could be a variant of [name_u]Orion[/name_u]!’ Pronounced Or-I-uh And I was enamored with the idea since I had been heavily into astrology/astronomy at the time(still am).
Then a few years later I named a dog Oriah and was super proud of the name. Only everyone seemed to mishear her name as O’Ryah or other Irish sounding variants and eventually my irritation and annoyance turned to disappointment and sadness as even I started to hear it and even occasionally mispronounce it.
After that experience I resentfully crossed it off my list completely, but plenty of time has passed and I recently thought of the name again and in looking it up(on a different site, since it’s not on here) nameberry only has [name_f]Oria[/name_f] which isn’t quite the same yet both are originally variants of [name_f]Aura[/name_f] so Oriah has a Latin origin not Irish.
Basically I just want to know if you think naming a child Oriah would be too difficult on a child and do you think me or her would still continue to come across these issues from people? Is it just not worth it? Does it even sound like a form of [name_u]Orion[/name_u] to anyone else? 