Re: Thoughts on the name Lourdes?
With the French pronunciation, unless one is a Catholic, it's just another geographical name. If one is Catholic, presumably it gets the French pronunciation. And that's fine. But taking a name that is not only in a foreign language but also has remarkable amounts of religious significance and then using a somewhat English pronunciation seems disrespectful to me, like cultural appropriation without regard to the culture. And I'm neither French nor Catholic.