It still escapes me why, or how, his name is pronounced “f-a-r-v-e”.
A lot about professional sports escapes me, but that one I just don’t get.
Peace,
mangeorge
It’s French, like “hors d’oeuvres.”
It has nothing to do with the fact it is French. In French, you would pronounce it Favr, with just the hint of the idea of an unstressed vowel at the end.
It’s pronounced Farv because English speakers cannot easily save Favr. We prefer words that have full vowels in our syllables. And, I believe, you will find that the Louisiana area, where Cajun (Acadian) French is mixed in with southern American English, they have come to pronounce this consonant combination in this fashion. 
I tried pronouncing it that way, and it is a little awkward. But not really difficult.
Funny thing is, if a sports announcer were to pronounce the name “Favre” he’d likely catch hell.
Strange world, eh?
Strangely enough, we don’t seem to have much difficulty in Canada pronouncing it “Favre.”
Yes, but you’re Canadian. There are a lot of regional dialects of English in North America with many different pronunciations of similar words. It happens. The correct way for Brett Favre to pronounce his surname is how he pronounces it.
Recent retired baseball player Bill Mueller pronounced his last name “Miller.” He was from the St. Louis area. Another St. Louis area player from the 1950s, Don Mueller, pronounced his surname as “myooler” (think of the animal “mule” and add “er”). Who was “right”?
Baseball player Dale Sveum – if I remember correctly – was once asked what his name means.
He replied, “It means a lot of people are going to mispronounce my name.”
There was a hockey player form the Czech Republic who’s name was Stanislav Neckar. His last name was pronounced NETS-kash
Kjell Samuellson, where the first name comes out as “Shelf” somehow…
There is the classic “Sade”, the most excellent jazz singer. I think even she pronounces two or three different ways.
Mike Krzyzewski owns this thread. (Shuh-shef-skee)
Great old English names like Featherstone (fan-shaw) and St. John (sin-jin) also qualify.
And my high school English teacher Mr. Mueller pronounced his name MOY-ler.
My own mother and her twin brother pronounce their family name differently!
A guy I went to high school with wound up working at the Duke student newspaper. He said that the keyboards had been set up with special function keys – probably CTRL-K or something – so that the coach’s name was rendered properly.
Had a prof named “Meagher”, pronounced “Marr” (I guess so that he doesn’t sound like the stingy type…).
Gaelic names are notoriously difficult.
Johnny Marr was born John Martin Maher… but changed it to the phonetic.
Bill Maher, however, successfully has Americans pronouncing his name correctly.
And I have no idea how you get “Shuv-von” out of Siobhan!
tony hrkac; pronounced “her-cuss” - a former nhl journeyman.
miroslav satan, pronounced “sh-tan” - current & decent left winger, (un?)fortunately has yet to play for the devils.
and then there was zarley zalapski – his name is pronounced exactly how it is spelled, but fuck, that’s a name.
In Polish, it would be pronounced “Kshih-SHEF-skee.” The initial “k” would not be silent. There are a few Krzyzewskis we know (unrelated to Coach K, so far as I know.)
Re: Mueller. In the German, the pronunciation would be “MÜ-ler.” The vowel is an umlaut-u. To make the sound, round you lips as if you were saying “oooo,” but make an “eeee” sound. Neither “myooler” nor “miller” is “correct” in the sense that that would be the way the original Germanic name was pronounced. However, families are free to Americanize/Anglicize a pronunciation as they see fit.
it’s pronounced “schell” and the surname is samuelsson (1 l, 2 s’s for those who wanna google it.)
also, ulf (pronounced “oolleff”) samuelsson; aka ‘knees mcgee’ is not (contrary to widespread belief) kjell’s brother… though how closely they may be actually related is, afaik, still up in the air.
“Bh” = “v” (or “w,” depending on the the vowels). Kinda like “ph” = “f” in English.
And “Sio” shouldn’t be too much a stretch, we have combinations like “sion” in English.
Actually, the “kj” letter combination is pretty interesting, as the “proper” pronunciation in Norweigian is like the “ch” in German “ich,” but is being replaced by the English “sh” among many speakers.