[TwoMartinMan]

Originally Posted by Mike_A

its "eye - ba - nez" now but i think its a corruption of the old common spanish surname "eee-ban-nyez" usually spelled Ybanez.

I've read that the intended pronunciation originally was "eee-BAHN-yez" (taken from the spanish word "Ybanez") with the accent on the second syllable and a "~" over the "n" giving it a "y" sounding slur. But Americans are not real good at dealing with foreign sounding pronunciations. Americans see the letter "I" and they tend to pronounce it "eye". And since the "~" pronunciation mark does not exist in American English, Americans simply ignore it. The rest is history.