Anyway, we still haven't helped Crazycanuck with her original question.

Maybe if one knew the original language of the name it would help immensely with the pronunciation.

By now, I have mastered for German that Joop, Joachim, Jurgen, ..is Y.. pretty small potatoes. And Jacob, would have been totally acceptable in English dialogue with this German firm, with "Y" instead of hard "J" pronounciation, where I was in the suburbs of Vancouver. 1/4 of business conversation was in German, no English translation going on. So the German "Georg" is not George. It is hard "G", followed by "airg". A very common German male name. I was embarrassed I said George for first few months to this one engineer who said nothing to correct me. (He was probably tired of correcting people.) Once, I did use his correct German name pronounciation, he seemed to instinctively respond more quickly to me in conversation.