Am I the only one who did this?

[Jiro]

I say Mah-ko because it is the official but I thought and still think May-ko sounds better.

[Sword]

Pronouncing it "may-ko"? How? Why? Sounds awful.

[Sum1sGruj]

Pronouncing it "may-ko"? How? Why? Sounds awful.

It makes me want to dive into the Lifestream headfirst with my balls tucked just hearing it that way. May-ko is the word, dammit!

[Wolf Kanno]

Pronouncing it "may-ko"? How? Why? Sounds awful.

Because it's how an english speakers grammar and syllable structure would pronounce it. If it was pronounced like that in Japanese it would probably be spelled Meko instead. Mahko just sounds silly to me, like I'm pronouncing some silly tonguetwister/Dr. Suess type rhyme scheme "Rokko's Paco taco is in his Mahko".

[Roogle]

Pronouncing it "may-ko"? How? Why? Sounds awful.

This is how I pronounced it as a child. I see Mako as a Japanese name from time to time and, of course, it is pronounced differently. My internal pronunciation has changed the way that I pronounce it to mirror that of the Japanese name.

[Bolivar]

I still say Mayko and Aeris

[Raistlin]

Mayko all the way. I think that's the majority pronunciation in the US.

[Jinx]

OKAY

people

when you say AERIS how do you say it?

Some people say it like the astrological sign--Aries. I say it like the word Heiress.

[Mercen-X]

I pronounced it the first way for a long time. When I found her name was supposed to be Aerith, I switched to Heiress.

Embarassingly before I got the game, was reading a walkthrough on it, I kept reading Midgar as "Midjar" which is grammatically impossible. Sometimes in my mind only it is still "midjar"...

First of all, I'm not sure grammar has anything to do with pronunciation. Secondly, if you consider the first four letters alone "midg", you could easily mistake that for midge as in "midget." Of course, knowing it was named after Midgard (anglicised form of Old Norse name meaning "middle enclosure") the name for the world inhabited by men (in other words, Gaia, Terra, the Planet, etc.) would have helped.

[Raistlin]

OKAY

people

when you say AERIS how do you say it?

Some people say it like the astrological sign--Aries. I say it like the word Heiress.

Aries all the way, which I think is probably typical for the US. "Heiress"? Wtf.

[Wolf Kanno]

I said it like Heiress, Aries just sounds too masculine for an overly feminine character like Aerith. Though, when I learned what her real name was, I've consistently taken advantage of the name change feature to correct the localization team's mistake. So the pronunciation isn't much of a big deal like the Mako one is.

[Jinx]

I wonder how many people named her Aretha.

[Jiro]

Aeris is clearly not Aries though. I pronounce it Air-is, like the "is" in hiss. Although I do still call her Aerith from time to time in which case the end syllable becomes "ith" like in with.

[Tigmafuzz]

I wonder how many people named her Aretha.

I wonder how many people named her Urethra.

[Bubba]

Urethra Franklin