Nabh isn't my most favourite name either - when I asked our B&A team if it would be possible to change it the following happened:
At the start of the discussion I thought that this wouldn't be a big deal - it is only a name after all. Then I looked more closely into our new background (and really fell in love with it to be honest) and I had to recognise that the change to a gods name is no trivial thing.
We have professional linguists writing whole languages for our races (very similar to what Tolkien did) and the pantheon of gods is woven into background stories, the language, society structure, art and magic item names and many other areas.
Changing a single name would therefore ripple through the whole web of interlinked background and would cause in some parts rework.
Nabh isn't just a random name - it is a derivate of maebh / mab English speakers will recognise as a fae name with a very wide background in literature / poetry / history. If you have read the "Dresden Files" (an awesome fantasy series written by Jim Butcher) you know what I am talking about
I hope I could shed some light on the topic - further questions should be directed at our B&A masterminds ( @Giladis and @Pip Hamilton ) - they know what they are talking, I am only the guy writing rules
Philip
There is so much subjectivity in how a name is read. Even though my dialect is UK English, I read Undying Dynasties with two "die"s, but that also doesn't bother me at all. There are always going to be complaints about names. Some people complain about names in real life. I find such people petty and mean-spirited, but it does illustrate that people have opinions about all sorts of things in language, including people's names. We can't account for all of them, since they come down to nothing more than aesthetics that everyone disagrees about.
As to Nabh - the main complaint seems to be that it sounds like nob, which is only true is some dialects. Also, Orks in 40k have literally had a unit called a Nob for decades, and I never saw anyone complain about that.
If you want it to sound less like that, consult an Irish Gaelic speaker. That is the language whose phonology I used as inspiration. The bhdigraph is actually like a v in English - think of it the same way that ph is a f. The spelling is chosen deliberately to evoke the feel of Old Irish culture. I carefully chose NOT to use more awkward, but more authentic spellings, like Nadb, or Nadhbh. We could have Anglicised it, but all the names of all the cultures in the setting are written in as authentic a manner as possible, not pandering to the impulses of any language outside their own, unless the result would be utterly impenetrable. This really ins't such a case.
As I've said elsewhere, it's absolutely expected that people will pronounce the names in way we didn't intend. That's how these things always go - and so I don't really want to spend ages explaining the pronunciations, most variations of which should be within acceptable boundaries. But, if I might suggest, perhaps if you're finding a name so wrong that it annoys you, try to figure out if the pronunciation might be different than you imagined, especially if there are odd letter combinations like bh in there. Once the full fluff is out, it will be much easier to see where the inspirations for all these names lie, if you can't already.
Now to explain a little bit how world building for 9th Age setting is done.
We had existing armies with existing backgrounds people were/are attached to. These we reduced to basic themes devoid of any particular IP protected background. So DE for example became a set of words "militaristic, pirates, slavers, cultists" which defined the core of what they are. Then we the Background and Arts team went and decided upon cultural influences for each of the armies to help us build from the ground up. Cultures that have more obvious real world inspirations like Undying Dynasties (Ancient Egypt), Empire of Sonnstahl (late medieval/early modern age Holy Roman Empire) or Kingdom of Equitaine (medieval France) were easy. Mythical races such as Elves or Dwarves not so much. So we thought real carefully how to keep our elves recognisable to those familiar with background from other games while giving us enough free scope to make something our own.
The decision was made to make continental celts as the basic cultural strata for all three elven groups and started developing ancient elven language and religion prior to the creation of the three distinct groups. With these basics established the team delved into the mythology and history of our own world to find further themes that could be applied to individual armies and developed into something new. Sparta, Thebes and early Roman Republic among other things served as inspiration for the Dread Elves (though they have a different name "normal" name for themselves, but that will have to wait a bit).
If you have any other questions please ask and I will see how much I can answer within the constraints we are working on.
Cheers