The way most English speakers pronounce Yahweh is just as made up - yes, this is true. Ancient Jews would never have pronounced it 'yaa-way', lol.
Hebrews would never leave out the two H sounds - Hebrew-speaking Jews today pronounce the H's as Kh's, I think.
Hebrew-speaking Arabs (yes, there are some in Israel/Palestine) pronounce the H's as the second Arabic H (ح) which is often transliterated into English as 7.
in fact they are clearly pronounced in Arabic to this day - indeed they are. Hebrew-speaking Arabs are also more likely to pronounce the Hebrew Ayin because the Arabic version (ع) is still pronounced as a consonant (Jews today apparently pronounce Hebrew ayin as a vowel).
Getting back to the OP, I'm not sure Charles Taze Russell deserves most of the blame for promoting the name Jehovah. I think Rutherford made much more effort to promote that name than Russell.