I know that suffixes "ez" and "es" denotes "son of" in the Spanish language; but, why the different endings? For instance, you may see the surname Gonzales or Gonzalez?

It has to do with the government taking a census. this practice started in B.C. (or b.c.e. for the heathens) and names were subject to the census takers who knew how to write, but not always know the spellings of names.

They did the best they could. It was also subject to how the family pronounced it. Some of these were like Johnson/Johnston, Gib/Gibb/Gibbs, White/Waite/Wit/Witt, and hundreds of others.

I’m sorry, what is “Spanish Portuguese”?

@La_chica_gomela I was a bit confused there. A friend from Mexico was trying to explain to me awhile back that there’s a difference between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese. Sorry about the Spanish Portuguese.

Ohhhhhh. Okay. I get what you were trying to say, just like British English vs. American English.

So, are you asking about Spanish surnames or Portuguese surnames? Or both?

DrBill is right. it is because in spanish Z’s and S’s have the same phonetic sound (they both are pronounced the way in english S is pronounced). So when last names were recorded in say a church (where most early census documents began) it just depended on who was writing it down.

I heard that the “S” ending tends to be Spanish (from Spain) in origin, and the “Z” tends more to be more New World.

@Yetanotheruser that is interesting. I am not really sure if that is true or not. I suspect it has something to do with indigenous languages mixing with Spanish. (but the “es” or “ez” would still denote “son of…”)

@La_chica_gomela both.

@Yetanotheruser – I disagree, I never hear Latin American people pronounce it “z” and I’ve actually heard a Mexican Spanish teacher tell her American students they were pronouncing it wrong when they used the “z”, something like “We don’t buzzzzzzzz in Spanish”.

@jmah, Alive is right that they are the same sound in Spanish, so their explanation sounds pretty logical to me.

I can’t speak to Portuguese specifically. I don’t really know anything about it. That’s why I asked, because I figured if you were actually only asking about Portuguese, I would keep my mouth shut.

@La_chica_gomela, I don’t think there is a difference in the pronunciation of, say, “Cortez” or “Cortes”. I am not a native Spanish speaker, but I have noticed the difference in the pronunciation by folks from Panama, Columbia, Guatemala, and different parts of Mexico.