I can understand people grasping at straws for pronunciation if they have only seen a name/word in print...but when you stare into their eyes and TELL them exactly how it should be....and they stare back with a look that says.."I am not going to made that weird noise...'we' don't talk like that"....*sigh*

My son's name is "Darriel"...(yes, from the Darkover novels, if you remember minor characters)...and we have one friend who will NOT say it...it is forever "Darryl"...it seems that the sounds we make when we speak are somehow VERY intimately connected with our persona and our ego, and many folks 'wear' their accents and colloquialisms like a badge, so that they are somehow offended by 'other' pronunciations.

(*grin*...some may know the group "The Boarding Party" who made several records of shanties....I can barely keep from giggling when I hear the name pronounced by one friend from a small town in New England...it simply comes out "The Bawding Potty"...)...yes, I know, the 'R' and 'L' are a variable couple of letters in English....still...)

.....and who remembers Senator Howell Heflin?...probably the most incomprehensible southern accent ever foisted on us! ...ahhh..the varieties of 'Colin' pale .......