“This is just insane. What do you say to people? Hi, I’m the voice of ‘Laurel’?”

That was the question a bemused Jay Aubrey Jones put to his interviewer, technology writer David Pogue. A Broadway theatre artist and television performer, Jones was astonished to discover he was in the news for his pronunciation of the word “laurel” – yep, not “yanni” – for Dictionary.com. Jones recorded some 36,000 words, phrases and proper names while working as a temporary worker at JP Morgan Chase.

Some 10 or 11 years later, it became an internet mystery, with some people hearing “laurel” and some, “yanni”, forcing a bitter divide down the middle.

And yes, Jones hears “laurel” too.