Do Americans pronounce "Ellen" and "Alan" in the same way? I am especially concerned with the first vowel.
EDIT:
Here is a quote that may be a case in point:
Being a Brit also, the names "Ellen" and "Alan" tend to sound the same
when spoken with an American tongue. It was just unfortunate that the
child was very tom boyish and had an ambiguous sounding name
Context: discussion on why they chose a boy-looking girl for the movie "Fatal Attraction"
Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093010/board/thread/186160978?d=186229310&p=1#186229310
Best Answer
Americans don't pronounce them exactly the same.
However, some American dialects change the pronunciation of /æ/ before /l/ in a way that I believe makes it sound more like /ɛ/ to foreigners. In fact, in a few New Zealand and Australian dialects, these vowels become identical before /l/; see salary-celery merger; this merger would indeed also merge Allen and Ellen, but I don't believe it has happened in any American dialects.
UPDATE: the OP was asking why some Brits heard "Allen" when the actors in Fatal Attraction were saying "Ellen". I believe the pronunciation of /ɛl/ is nearly the same in the U.S. and the U.K., but if you're listening to an unfamiliar dialect, you rely more on context, and my guess is that the people watching got the name wrong because they were relying more on context and the girl playing Ellen looked somewhat like a boy.