Deleted User wrote:
if that spelling was used today?
That spelling wouldn’t be used today. As in, it’s just not a Modern Irish form. It’s Old Irish, the pronunciation being (using simplified IPA, Celticist notation) /ɡov´n´u/, and the Old Irish genitive would be
Goibnenn /ɡov´n´əN/. But it’s not Modern Irish.
Modern Irish
Gaibhne and
Gaibhneann (/ɡav´n´ɪ, ɡav´n´əN/?) (or
Goibhne,
Goibhneann, not sure, /ɡov´n´ɪ/? /ɡev´n´ɪ/?) are direct regular outcomes of those old forms, compare Old Irish
Ériu, Érenn → modern
Éire, Éireann.
If the old spelling were used today it’d
perhaps then be treated like a foreign name (so kept unlenited, not changing according to cases), cause it just doesn’t work in Modern Irish. Kinda like
Þunor would not be used today in English (you’d rather use
Thor borrowed from the Norse, since the native name was lost) or like you would not write
Wǣringwīċsċīr in a modern English text but rather
Warwickshire, or
Ēadmūnd vs
Edmund, or
Portesmūþa vs
Portsmouth, etc.
Deleted User wrote:
Also, if you would, how is "-nait" pronounced?
/nət´ ~ nɪt´/, that is, with the vowel of English
about or maybe
kit (a centralized vowel, said with mouth and tongue relaxed) and Irish slender /t´/, sound that does not exist in English (but, depending on dialect, something similar to Russian “soft”
ть or Czech
ť, or English
ch).
You can try entering the names into
https://abair.ie/en/ – it’ll give you some idea how they would be pronounced in three main dialectal areas (but bear in mind, the sound synthesis is not perfect).