Carl
when I try to pronounce 'adl' I have to do a lot more with my tongue and mouth than when I try to pronounce 'ald'. I wonder if this could be a factor.
You may well be right. A number of languages show this tension between simplifying the sounds (to make them easy to pronounce) and complicating them (possibly to make them easier to distinguish, and also perhaps to demonstrate prowess).
If you will forgive a mildly off-topic diversion, Devanagari, the most widely used script in India, actually has rules about phonetic elisions of the sort seen in alder, and addled - except that they are with regard to the nasal consonants, rather than the 'r', 'l' or 's' sounds that are otherwise the most commonly elided.
Consequently, they recognise that before a 'p' or 'b' sound, for instance, the most appropriate nasal sound is the 'm' sound, not a 'n' sound, and most words are structured that way. If, for whatever reason (say through prefixes, as in anpad {unschooled}) a different nasal sound is required before the consonant, it is given its full value, rather than being elided (as would be the case of the 'n' in 'ing', for instance).
In English, I suspect, one of the reasons we have this problem is the sheer prodigality with which the language has borrowed its vocabulary from other languages. We are subject to a barrage of words that were never meant to be pronounced in English (Adler being one of them). It then 'makes sense' for us to slowly, but surely, mould them into pronunciations that most suit our tongues (literally).
Thus, in the States, nuclear is more commonly nucular, and realtor becomes reelator. In the UK, more often than not, I hear people saying pacific rather than specific. And so on. In that sense, you may well lose the battle to keep your name - sometime in the future, one of your descendants will start spelling it Alder (and pronouncing it the same way) and it will have too much inertia to ever come back to the 'right' pronunciation and spelling. As who should know better than me - with an Indian name and an English accent!
cheer
the sunshine warrior
