I personally have a terrible habit of using British spellings for lots of things because they look more correct to me...it got me in a lot of heated debates with my fifth-grade teacher, when I still thought that "but I read it in a book!" was a valid defense.

I find it very strange that people pronounce my last name as "Oh-ppenheimer." I mean, double consonants imply a short vowel in English as well as in German. I guess people see a long, German-looking name and get intimidated. The secret to good German pronunciation is refusing to act scared. German compound nouns can smell fear. :)