KenG spots Zaragoza/Zaragosa spelling glitch!
KenG posted a thread on the strelz forum (http://strelzbacktalk.proboards19.com/index.c.cgi?action=display&board=EP&thread=1208037839&page=1) about the fact that on El Paso’s eastside, the street name Zaragoza is spelled two different ways depending on the streat sign.
So, since I live in the neighborhood (or drive through it daily) I thought I’d snap a couple of pics for you all (and maybe someone in charge of street signs) to see.
This is on the corner of Saul Kleinfeld and Zaragoza/Zaragosa. Right near Senator Shapleigh’s office.
One sign spells it like this:
The other side of the street, at the same intersection, spells it like this:
Weren’t we on one of those crazy lists like “Top Illiterate Cities in America” or something? I can’t make up my mind on whether I think this is sad or funny.
Maybe I should send this into Headlines on the Jay Leno Show?
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I am a progressive Chicano voice here in El Paso. Not Hispanic, not Mexican…Chicano!
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Okay, I have studied the pictures very carefully. How does the City change the sign to an “S” when the light is green, and to a “Z” when the light is red?
Lol. I guess it’s new technology.
I know the answer to the mystery.One sign is the spanish version (Zaragoza)the other street sign is in the spanglish version(Zaragosa).This seem to happen a lot on the border.A cross cultural thing that just happens when two or more languages are used in a society or come in close contact with each other.Something like cross pollination I would think.
The Troll
No…there is no difference of how you spell a last name in English or Spanish, a name is a name. Would Jaime be Jaime in Spanish, and Jayme in English?
The real reason that some Spanish last names are seen with Z and also with S is simple…interesting, but simple.
Most last names that have Z in them are rooted in Spain. Thus the use of “zeta”, and since the Spainards conqured Mexico, and there was intermarriage, some Mexicans ended up with these last names.
Yet, the reason behind some of these names that we usually see with a Z and then sometimes see with an S actually are to differentiate hertiages. Names with Z were usually christian decent, and the names with S were of sephardic Jewish decent. Much like Israeli Shimon Peres,it is still pronounced exactly like Perez but spelled differently, for obvious reasons.
So they are both spelled correctly, the probelm is that whoever put the signs up…well did not research nor have the courtesy to ask the namesake, how to spell the name correctly, shame on them.
That’s ok man, we have three different spellings of it in Pensacola, and we are the oldest city, so you can bet that the illiteracy has spread.