And another one for the Welsh!

Tom is a big Horatio Hornblower fan, and on the rare rainy day like today, he watches one of the DVDs from the BBC series. The role of Hornblower is played by the Welsh actor, Ioan Gruffud.

To hear how that name is pronounced, click on this link. ( listen)

Tom wondered about the name, and I told him it was probably Welsh. He ta-ta'd me, saying that the actor is too goodlooking to be Welsh. (The point being that I am Welsh, of course.) So I looked it up and found out that he is Welsh indeed. I also pointed out that his name is just the Welsh version of "John Griffith", which is not so unusual. 

Gruffud has played in a number of other things, including the role of Tony Blair in the movie W. about George W. Bush. He has been asked why he has not anglicized his name to make it easier for people to pronounce, the assumption being that it must have stood in his way professionally not to sound like a regular English chap. I love his response: "We all learned to pronounce Schwarznegger."