Dialect split in original language?

[Wilson Gray]

In the '50's, I went to high school with a guy named "King McElroy."
Contemporaneously, there was a rhythm-and-blues singer named "Solomon
McElroy." King pronounced the shared surname as "MACKLE-roy," whereas
Solomon pronounced it as "muh-KELLery."

Neither of these pronunciations matches what the spelling suggests.
FWIW, using myself as a representative American-English speaker with
little or no knowledge of Irish, I'd expect the pronunciation to be
"muh-KELL-roy." Since this matches neither of the attested
pronunciations, perhaps the difference stems from a dialect split in
Irish.

Uh, not that it matters or anything. I was just wondering.

-Wilson
--
Everybody says, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange
complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is knows how deep
a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our
race. He brought death into the world.

--Sam Clemens

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