Loiks wrote:I guess it's a little bit a matter of cultural heritage: [zee] is Soviet-Russian variant and [tsett] Baltic German. Estonians are almost inable to pronounce [z], so it's either [s] or [ts]. [tsee] (c) and [see] (z) would sound very similar, so [tsett] is better to distinguish.
Someone having a surname like Zirk is either showing off, or having foreign ancestors. Or somewhere in 19. century some German landlord did give this name to someone, and it lived through all name-changing campaigns until today.
In Estonian, all person names, and almost all site (country, settlement, region etc.) names, from countries, which are using latin alphabet, are written as in original language - and are pronounced as in original language too. Characters c, q, z, x and y are used in such names only. And other characters not included int Estonian alphabet may be used too - in case printing office has proper fonts. (Any estonian not able to pronounce such name properly is probably considered as an illiterate - taking into account the number of different languages which use latin alphabet this makes almost everyone of us illiterate

)
The writing of names from languages using other alphabets is based on pronuncion in original language - and along with proper estonian characters foreign come characters (f, š, z and ž) may be used too (like Tšernomõrdin p.e.).
Characters f, š and ž are also used rarely in borrowed words, which aren't 'estonized' jet, like šaakal. füüsika or žetoon. No really estonian word (or name) can contain any character from either of groups.