Well, this is a pretty silly use of correct pronounciation. Nevertheless, it raises what can be a confusing fact of life. Written names do not correspond to pronounced names at all precisely. Because we (or at least most of us) live in a multicultural society, the pronounciation rules of one dominant language are at best inartfully applied to names of origin in another culture. Consider that many cultures pronounce letters differently, and many have different alphabets or altogether different written forms. Translation into (say) an English spelling is always more than a little dubious. Sometimes if the name already is spelled in the Latin alphabet that is retained, or there may be an attempted rendering of something that, with maybe an American pronouciation and little bit of generous tolerance could be construed as resembling the actual spoken name.

Okay, certainly I have said far too much on this topic. You must forgive me; I myself have a difficult-to-pronounce name. Suffice it to say, no computer program could reliably articulate a string of letters of unknown origin. Still, there are important uses for correct pronouciation. I have been in college classrooms and jury halls with a couple of hundred other people waiting on every syllable for our (likely mangled) names to be called. This can be difficult. So, a simple proposal: a phonetic name printed in everyone's file, right after their written name, just like in a dictionary.

I think this segues right into phonetic English and telemarketers paying US for the use of our time....:-)

don't forget that the same name can have different pronuciations depending on the country the person lives in.

For example, in the USA the name is "cos TELL o", whereas in Ireland it's "COS tell o" ; "McGrath" is pronounced "Muh GRAW", and so on.