It’s not Hedy, it’s Hedley. Hedley Lamarr.
And it was a sly Donnish dig by Tolkien at the Bloomsbury group, particularly Harold Nicolson and his wife Vita Sackville-West.
In Schenectady, “Featherstonehaugh” is pronounced “feather-stone-haw.”
Not British, but Josef von Sternberg and Erich von Stroheim added the “von” to their name to make is sound aristocratic. Von Sternberg never denied the name change, but von Stroheim kept the change secret most of his life.
It’s pronounced, “throat-warbler-mangrove.”
I’ve read the same thing about Ludwig “van” Beethoven (or rather, his father); but the Wikipedia article on him doesn’t mention it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beethoven