I too think we should leave the names alone and stop being purist.
As Don notes, even the purists can't agree on pronunciation. This is because Latin was used for so long a time that the pronunciation drifted much as the German gender drifts Gerd has so nicely illustrated. The Latin of Julius Caesar and Cicero was very different from Medieval Latin which was a softer sounding language (if that makes sense as a sweeping summary). The disagreements I've encountered over Latin pronunciation are between classicists and medievalists, although this is not usually acknowledged (and is, perhaps, therefore not understood).
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