Marie Jaell - Piano works - WDR 3 broadcast

[Alan Howe]

Tricky, that. In France, her surname would have been pronounced 'Ja-ell' (two syllables; 'J' as in 'Jaques'). However, since her husband was Austrian, it's a bit of a guess as his name could apparently be written with or without the diaeresis (ë). In German, therefore, it could be 'Ya-ell' or 'Yale', but my guess that it was pronounced the French way. Jdperdrix has it about right, I'd say.

[jdperdrix]

And in Alsace, her name would be pronounced closer to "Sha-ell". (No disrespect meant to any Alsatian!)
The diaeresis diacritic can be found in German, but very seldom (I only know the word "coëffizient" in books from the 19th century). It's much more common in French ("Noël"). So, was it was pronounced "Ya-ell" in German and the diaeresis was added by the French?
But it could also be a story similar to that of the Italian composer Ferdinando Paër. His father's name was Pär (pronounced "Per"). As he was established in Italy, the lack of "umlaut" in Italian made him use the spelling Paer (in German, ae = ä), which was pronounced "Pa-er" by Italians, which was in turn spelled Paër by the French...