The Pronunciations They Are a Changin'

As we close out the game of April and head into May (with a very special first inning), here's an observation:

I was watching the highlights of the Bostons v. Atlanta basketball game and thought:
Boston: don't get smug. You have - 4.9 million people; Atlanta has 5.3 million. There was a shift. Get over it.

But second (and apropos to this post):
We still refer to the Celtics with a soft "C" sound, even though everything else celt-related has now been modified to a hard "C" (or "K") sound.

When I was a young boy, my first dog was named Hailey. He was a Schipperke and we pronounced his name the same as Halley's Comet: with a long "A". By the time the comet made its pass, though, we were admonished to pronouce it with a short "A".

And speaking of dogs and pronunciations, there's the whole Peking/Beijing thing. The city has been renamed (or at least repronounced) as Beijing, but the dogs (and I use the term advisedly) are still "Pekingnese" and we still order "Peking Duck" at the restaurant. I'm not sure why we made the switch when we haven't respelled Munich or Moscow to Munchen or Mockba. For that matter, we don't bother to be precise on the pronunciations of Paris, Budapest, Mexico, or Quebec, to name just a few. But we do differentiate between Notre Dame and Notre Dame, depending on which place we're talking about.

Just a little pre-game warmup as we head into the inning of May.