Mispronouncing Henry David Thoreau's last name

As reported by The New York Times -

It turns out that the accent does not belong on the second syllable, as in “merlot” or “Poirot.” It rests on the first syllable, like “thorough” — as in, “I am thoroughly confused by this strange turn of events.”

This front-loaded pronunciation has apparently always been there, hiding in plain sight in the halls of academe, even if no one told us about it. “There is a consensus that “THU-ro” is the correct way to pronounce it,” John J. Kucich, co-president of the nonprofit Thoreau Alliance, said in an interview. “But somehow “Thu-RO” — here Kucich uttered the word the common way — “got into the culture, and it’s in the water to pronounce it that way.”..

“People aren’t used to seeing that name; it’s not a New England name, and they pronounced it THU-ro” she said in an interview. So did the man himself, judging from ample contemporary evidence.

For instance, there’s an 1860 journal entry from Thoreau’s neighbor Bronson Alcott, the father of Louisa May Alcott. “Comes Thoreau and sups with us,” Alcott wrote. “He is rightly named Thorough … the pervading Thor, the sturdy sensibility and force in things.”

And in a 1918 letter from Edward Emerson, son of Thoreau’s friend Ralph Waldo Emerson: “We always called my friend Thórow, the h sounded, and accent on the first syllable,” he wrote...

(Both pronunciations are actually technically incorrect, at least from the French perspective, he adds; the proper French pronunciation would be “tu-row,” with the “th” pronounced as a hard T and an accent on neither syllable.)