Quoting Raptorial Talon <raptorialtalon@gmail.com>:
"well its certainly accurate - compared to pretty much every other lethal device, nukes are new and recent." There's just no good etymological reason to assume a connection there, at least not that I can imagine . . . At least Latinate names are always phonetic in some sense. No worries about contrived mispronunciations.
Well, sure, Latinate names are phonetic, if you pronounce them in Latin! Makes sense, since the Latin alphabet was specifically and deliberately adapted for the writing of Latin, something we've never bothered to do in English--in fact, we've gone backward over the years, to the extent of chucking out useful letters for sounds like the "th" in "think".
The problem with Latinate names in English is that the pronunciation is _underdetermined_ by the spelling--there are often several plausible pronunciations, and no way to choose the intended one based solely on the string of letters on the page.
-- **************************************************************** Nicholas J. Pharris