Talk:Santa Ynez, California

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“Old spelling”[edit]

Regarding the toponym, the article claims it to be an “old spelling” for “Santa Inés”, but this is inaccurate:

The “y” spelling of initial vowel “i” is certainly an archaic spelling (most notably appearing in the archaic spelling “Ysabel” for “Isabel”, whose archaic initial “y” was the basis for using a yoke—“yugo” in Spanish—as a rebus symbol of Queen Isabella I of Castile “the Catholic”).

However, the “z” is not an archaic spelling, but an outright misspelling made by seseante speakers (which includes almost every Spanish speaker in the Americas), due to the fact that they merge (and thus “confuse”) the pronunciation (and thus the spelling) of phonemes “s” and “c/z”. And it appears they mistook the ending of “Inés” for the common Spanish onomastic ending -ez (which actually only appears in surnames and never in a forename like “Inés”).

Any non-seseante/ceceante Spanish speaker (such as most Spaniards) can instantly spot that “Ynez” contains a misspelling with the “z” (because we do not ever pronounce a Spanish “c/z” phoneme there; it is clearly an “s”, and those two phonemes are for us completely distinct and unmistakable). Although some may or may not be aware about what's going on with the archaic initial “y” spelling (some might think of it as a misspelling too, because it is a misspelling according to the modern spelling rules; unlike the “z”, which is and has always been a misspelling when the underlying phoneme is “s” instead of “c/z”).

TL;DR: The archaic spelling of “Inés” was “Ynés”. “Ynez” is a seseante misspelling of that archaic spelling, induced by the difficulty seseante speakers have telling apart which words end with -és from those ending in the common Spanish onomastic ending -ez (which sound the same for them, but are not the same, neither etymologically nor to speakers for whom that phonological distinction is still very alive and well). 80.103.150.15 (talk) 01:06, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! These are great comments! Please feel free to edit the page as you see fit, provided that your edits apply the five pillars of Wikipedia. In particular, when you edit, please make sure to add a source that can be used to verify your change! Welcome and thanks again! DocFreeman24 (talk) 04:32, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]