>I have to take issue with your use of mispronouncing. You, a stranger, may think the name of a place should be pronounced a certain way; but I submit that the way it's pronounced by the folks who live there is ipso facto the "correct" pronunciation.
I agree that the way the locals say the word is the "correct" way. In some cases, as I have mentioned before, there are a few different "correct" local versions. In fact, finding these obscure local variations is part of the fun of travelling.
I think it is different in the UK where the names tend to be older and have evolved over along time without an obvious reference point. The ones I find really strange are the ones like Cairo
http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=words&Number=12538 which you mentioned in the cultural arrogance thread and I believe was mentioned in one of Bill Bryson's books.
I find it interesting that such a well known (and really quite easy to pronounce) place name got changed. I suppose that in the days before mass communication, it didn't really matter how the rest of the world pronounced a word, it just mattered that you said it the same way as your parents and your teacher.
