So it turns out, being the ignorant American pig that I am, that I’ve been pronouncing Damjan Rudez’s name wrong this whole time. “Dam Jan Rue Dezz”. I should have known that him being Croatian, not Spanish, means that his last name is pronounced very Slavically: “Rudich”.
His first name, though is a total head scratcher. “Dah Moe” is, supposedly, the preferred pronunciation. In what universe does that make sense? The Serbo-Croatian universe, apparently. I even started reading the Wikipedia article entitled “Serbo-Croatian phonology” but once they started talking about “post-alveolar and palatal affricates” I started getting all glazy-eyed and wondered why I wasn’t watching basketball.
In conclusion, there is no conclusion. You get no answers from me.