Years ago I used to do commentary for the local Christmas Parade and I full well know the two words cavalry and Calvary and what they refer to but I’m here to tell you after you’ve seen a bunch of people on horses go by and the next float is the one for Calvary Baptist you have to concentrate to get it right, and when you screw it up anyway you are going to get ribbed about it for weeks.
I don’t know if this an American thing but as a Canadian I’ve never heard anyone say “calvary” meaning mounted soldiers. I grew up Catholic, and had also hear calvary in church.
I listen to A Way with Words podcast and had actually never heard of this mix up at all until they discussed it:
They suggest it’s basically an incorrect pronunciation with people getting the religious term and the horse term confused. Nothing at all about the difficulty to pronounce the “V” after the “L”. I got the impression that this is more common in the southern (more religious?) USA.
I don’t think the analogy to nuc-u-lar is valid. That was a mispronunciation started by Eisenhower that made its way into popular culture. The first time many people heard the word was when he mispronounced it.
This is a straight up mix up of two totally different meaning words that spelled and sound similar.