Bryan wrote:
"Harry Krause" wrote in message
...

Sigh. Once again, Cortés was Spanish, not Mexican. Therefore his last name
is spelled Cortés, not Cortez. Cortes is the Mexican spelling of the name,
but not the way the man himself spelled it.

But, Harry, the sea, not the man, is called the Sea of Cortez. It doesn't
matter that he was a Spaniard. The Gulf of California is called the Sea of
Cortez. Now I will concede that this spelling is prevalent on English
language maps and documents, and that Spanish language maps and documents
may very well disagree with the spelling. Still, you remind me of me back
in the day when I took my last university English course. One of the topics
we covered was the evolution of language. It was very upsetting to me, the
dumbing down of the language; but I had to concede that language, whether it
was alright with me, or not, does evolve, and words and their meanings,
uses, pronunciations, even spellings, does change as a result of external
pressures. So, whether Senor Cortes was Spanish or Mexican makes no
difference to me; I still have to look up the Sea of Cortez under the Cortez
spelling. By the way, did you really find my comment on spelling more
interesting than my suggestion that boating in the Gulf of California would
be a great idea for anyone interested in such an endeavor?


Bryan,
It appears that Cortez is an Americanized spelling of the Sea of Cortes.
They have changed the s to a z to reflect the phonetic spelling of Cortes.

If you run a Goggle on Mar de Cortés you will get 1.9 million hits, so
it appears the Mexicans do spell it Cortes.

--
Reggie
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That's my story and I am sticking to it.

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