Does careless pronunciation offend?

Despite my best efforts, I invariably pronounce (when speaking in English, I should add) names like Naomi, Moe (i.e. with adjacent vowels) as Nayomi, Moye. It's the natural way of pronouncing this phonetic feature in English, but would it offend?

To put the boot on the other foot for a moment, in the various countries where I have stayed over many years my name has often been pronounced according to the local dialect. It never bothered me at all, and I often felt it was quite attractively elegant the way it came out.

Would your average Naomi, Moe, etc. feel the same way?

I agree with you over the Naomi, as it's a name also found in English-speaking countries and we have our own pronunciation of it, but "Moye"? I find that harder to pronounce than Moe- how exactly are you pronouncing it? It sounds like you might not even be close, which is a bit too careless really. "Mo-eh" isn't really that hard to say.

Naomi (try saying "now-me" and you will be a lot closer) probably doesn't mind too much, but Moe might not even realise it is her name you are trying to say.

Imagine that somebody writes the katakana version of your name in the wrong way. I think it would be comparable.

You already gave the answer yourself. I think you can't really help it when the speaker is foreign. My Japanese name has countlessly mispronounced. Hey, my maiden name is so rare that even the local Japanese hardly get it right. I just think, "Oh, well" and let them pronouce whatever they can or want to. It would be my new nickname.

On a related note, Naomi was originally an imported name. In the rolling 20s, Junichiro Tanizaki wrote a novel about Naomi and Jouji (George) a Japanese couple so obsessed in Western culture that they're proud of their foreign-sounding names, and after that, the names became popular.

Btw, how would you pronounce the champagne Moet de Chandon? The first half is the same pronunciation as the Japanese female name Moe.

since you're a foreigner people are unlikely to be offended if you slip up once in a while, but if you keep doing it over and over it will start to bother them.

really there's no excuse for messing up japanese names as japanese has probably the easiest pronunciation of any language on the planet, the vowel sounds are always the same, they never change.

ah, ee, oo, ay, oh. throw any consonant you want in front of those sounds, that makes up the entire japanese language.

It does not offend, unless you are apparently not paying attention to the possible differences.

The other day I was at a training session and there was a Japanese guy named "Naoki." The American instructor pronounced the name like "nei-ou-key," the first part pronounced the same way as in the name "Naomi." I could tell that every time the instructor said it that way, it took the guy a few seconds until he noticed it was his name :) But everyone could tell the instructor was doing his best saying everyone's names as properly as he could (he was taking notes to help with that), so noone took offense.