Slightly OT, but Cowper street in Palo Alto is named after William Cowper. So a fun shibboleth (and as OP points out) is that the name is pronounced KOO-per.
Interesting, I grew up near where Cowper spent his last years, and I assumed it was pronounced pretty much phonetically (assuming you have a norfolk accent).
However that looks likely to be wrong, given that he didn't grow up there.
