Name variants in spelling and pronunciation

Problems! Problems!

Personally I'd use the phonetic spelling Feena because it's a nice little taste of history for the readers

Personally ,I would stick to the modern, correct spelling.Unless you are writing the entire book Phonetically,to give it an authentic feel.Otherwise, to most people it will look like an odd looking name .

9th century Carolingians I am using in my WIP have many name variations depending on Goth, Frank, Saxon, or Alemanni sources, plus Latinizations.

Odo or Eudo or Eudes.
Hedwig or Heilwig or Eilwigi.
Louis or Ludwig

Mercifully, some are known by one such as Wala and Welf.

It is always about choices.

Actually, Fiona shows up in Celtic mythology - it meant hunter. (Named an Irish wolfhound Beltene Fiona Lamfada once - it meant Shining Fire, hunter of the long arm (and not sure I spelled Lamfada right - long time ago)).

BTW - I didn't quite follow your first post - moderns would pronounce Fiona - Fee-own-na. Puma

Being Scottish, I'd automatically read it as 'Fee-own-a' as Puma put it, because I know so many of them, and to a Scottish reader it might even stand out a bit, because the name has been used so often in a modern context. I get your dilemma though - my WIP's set in the Czech Republic and so a lot of the names are pronounced differently to the way they would look to people unfamiliar with all the diacritics and such, but at the same time you want to get it right and be authentic. It's a toss up between readability and authenticity again, really. If it's important to you that they know how it's pronounced, another thing you could do, which I've seen in some books, is add a note at the beginning with the pronunciations, for those unfamiliar with Gaelic spelling conventions.

Sentosa said:

The following quote, found during research, made me think some more.

Fiona Originally, Fíona, pronounced Feena was an old Irish name meaning ‘vine.’ Today, pronounced fee-OH na, it is a Scottish feminine form of Fionn

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So at the time I want to use it, it was spelled Fiona but pronounced Feena.

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I had thought the name Fiona was invented by Macpherson, as per here.

I researched this because I wanted to use it for a character in 1810. I refrained because I could not find it in English use in late C18.

I hadn't realized it was used earlier as an Irish name. Though I probably couldn't have pulled it in for my Englishwoman anyhow