Why do so many people mispronounce such an easy name?

Geddes - it's not that hard to work out how that should be pronounced, is it?  Anyone who learnt the alphabet phonetically should be able to work it out more or less correctly with ease.  The obvious phonetic pronunciation would be 'Gedd - ez' (G for 'gate' that is, which should always be the first assumption made with a phonetic attempt anyway), which would be just about right, the only qualifier being that it is actually pronounce 'Gedd - iz'.

Simple then, so why do so many people seem to think they should pronounce it 'Geds', 'Jeds', 'Geeds', 'Jeeds' or 'Geddeez'.  None of those are the most obvious options but it is tiresomely often that I hear one or other of these used in preference to the correct pronunciation.  'Gedd-ez' is utterly forgivable, as is 'Gedd-ess'.  'Geds' and even 'Jeds' are understandable, as the letter 'e' is often unpronounced and the letter 'g' of course, has more than one sound, but the others are all nonsensical.  Why do they do it then?

My guess is that none of the people who come up with these pronunciations learnt grammar at school and thus are seemingly unaware that a vowel followed by a double consonant should always be pronounced using the short sound (e.g: 'hop' [short 'o'] versus 'hope' [long 'o']), as should a vowel followed by a single consonant which is the last letter of a word.  They also seem unaware that a letter like 'e' should only be pronounced using its long sound if it is followed by a single consonant which is itself followed by another vowel, or if is is placed next to another 'e' in the word.  If Michael Gove can get schools to start teaching basic grammar again, then he definitely has my vote.

As a final aside, a few weeks ago someone addressed me as "Mr Jeds"for the third time in as many days.  Being tired and in a slightly less patient mood than usual, once I'd put her right with the pronunciation yet again, I asked her the following question:
"After you jot up this morning, jot dressed into your jrey suit, drank your morning jrape goose, picked up your jolf clubs for the jame later today, then walked down your jarden path and opened your jarden jate, jot into your silver-jrey car and drove off, did you stop a jarage to put what the Americans might call jasoline into your tank?  And did the did the jarage staff understand what you meant?"
It was a little unkind I know, but I'd already told her twice how it should be pronounced.  It just seems that some people, unversed in correct English grammar, feel they have the right to choose whatever pronunciation they like when they see something written down and stick with it, no matter what.  Let's hope that changes sometime soon.  Roll on grammar lessons for all!

 I may return to this subject again some time.

Paul