I didn't even attempt an appropriate accent -- I think my head would have exploded.

An interesting resonance there with a project I've been planning, which I've been thinking of as "Comparative Phonetics for Heralds" (altho' it probably won't exactly be that).

For one thing, it's yet another dilemma of the best as the enemy of the good. If I can get folks to pronounce [French | German | Welsh | Italian | Flemish | Latin | Mongolian ] names and placenames correctly, is that good enough? Or do I have to get them to pronounce medieval [ all of the above ] correctly?

If I were to speak correctly for my persona it would be Middle English with a Welsh accent. Think Terry Jones reading Chaucer. Eww. So here's another question. Given that last, how would I pronounce, say, a Flemish or a Swedish or a Provencal name? In fact, I'd do it with a Middle-Anglo-Welsh accent. Hyper-eww. But the point is, the most authentic thing I could do is screw it up!

Case in point: our late queen of happy memory, Aikaterina. No way I would have referred to her as Aikaterina FitzWilliam. To me, she was Queen Katherine III, thank you very much. (And to my Byzantine Khazar alternate persona, she was Aikaterine Lukanina Drakonteiocheles.)

Look up "Jean Chauvin" and "Giovanni Caboto". (Thank you, Larry Gonick...)