Can't speak to Kotik's point, since I can only go by how my English-born professors pronounced those, or how I heard it when they pronounced it. It certainly wasn't the Spanish or the French pronunciation, respectively, which is what Americans
try to approximate with those names.
Scotland is full of funny pronunciations. Culross sounds like Coors (to my ears -- no doubt I'm missing some subtle intonations in there). And, of course, many Americans call it Edinburg although it's pronounced Edinburah (roll the r a little and yes the gh is still kind of in there, but it's a very soft ghostly gh).
In Norwich, where I was at uni, I once tried to buy a bus ticket to neighboring Wymondham, only to be told it was "Windum."
My father and I took a trip to England to celebrate my master's degree, and we were so used to this pattern that by the time we arrived at the small, lovely coastal Devon town of Boscastle, we'd spent a fair amount of time debating all the various ways in which it was likely to be pronounced (I think I put my money on "Boksel"). The lady at a local tea shop we asked about it looked quite perplexed. "It's Boscastle," she said, exactly as it's written.
Wikipedia has a page for this! It's rather fun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_na ... unciations