Spelling i/y (was Re: Same name)

Roger Mills <Rfmilly@...> wrote:


>In a message dated 4/11/2000 5:05:50 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
>draqonfayir@JUNO.COM writes:
>
><< My roommate's last name is Irizarry, and he tells me that an alternate
> spelling is Yrizarri.  He also sais that both Y/i-rizarr-i/y and
> Y/i-barra are probably Basque names, which could account for the spelling
> differences.
>  >>
>The "spelling reform" I particularly had in mind was promulgated by various
>Chilean writers in the post-independence period, perhaps as a way of setting
>"American" Spanish apart from the Old Country.
I didn't know about that! (BTW, Roger, I'm sure you remember when
in _Funes el Memorioso_ he's said to write with an orthography like
the one of Andrés Bello, using <i> for <y> and <j> for <g>... It
turns out, as you may know, that Andrés Bello was a Venezuelan
poet which later moved into Chile, and helped Bolívar around 1810;
this orthographic change seems to be directly opposite!)

Back on topic:
Down here I've seen Irizarri, but I have a friend whose last name
(Basque) is Jaureguiberry -- Basque seems to be fond of -rrV in
many words, which may account for many common despising words
ending in -rro and -rra in Spanish. I've also seen Heguy (pronounced
/'egi/) which seems to be Basque; Yrurtia (maybe Irurtia too), and
we had several historical characters named Irigoyen or Yrigoyen
(never Irygoyen or Yrygoyen). Anyone knows what this /ir(i)/ means?

Ibarra is far more common than Ybarra... And there's another common
beginning, /iba(r)/ (Ibarra, Ibarlucea, and maybe Ibáñez has to do
with it too?).

Many place names around here and in Paraguay and Uruguay have <y>
where you would expect <i>, but that's because of Guaraní
transliteration (<y> is the high central vowel, as well as
the word for 'water').


--Pablo Flores
  http://www.geocities.com/pablo-david/index.html
  ... I cannot combine any characters that the divine Library
  has not foreseen, which in some of its secret tongues do not
  bear some terrible meaning. No-one can articulate a syllable
  not filled of caresses and fears; which is not, in some one
  of those languages, the powerful name of a god...
                   Jorge Luis Borges, _The Library of Babel_