How did Mejico change to Mexico?

Question

How or why did Mejico change to the name Mexico?

Answer 1

X and J are pretty much pronounced the same way in Spanish.  For example, Javier or Xavier.  They are both correct.  Mexicans and Latin Americans usually spell it Mexico, but Spaniards usually spell it Mejico.  They are both correct.

Answer 2

because white people cant translate. the same thing happened with Texas, the N-word, America, and various other names

Answer 3

Still spelled and pronounced that way in some parts of Mexico, Check with someone in the Latin studies department of your local university.

Answer 4

Apparently they took Mejico and replaced the j with an x.  Simple as that.

Answer 5

Spaniards in the early colony wrote Mejico, due to the way it sounds, but Aztecs, before the spaniards, were also known as mexicas, that is the origin and proper spelling of the name.

Answer 6

Mejico is how the mexicans say it, mexicans is how the americans say it

Answer 7

George Lopez

Answer 8

when mex reaches its independence the new government decided 2  officially write the name of the country as mexico instead of mejico as a way of remarking the independence frm spain (cause spanish wrote it with j)

the name of the country comes frm the mexica indians tht the spanish found when they arrived 2 the mexico valley

Answer 9

Sofista is right, the thing is that when the Spaniards arrive they found a new culture and asked what where the names of towns  and places, they give Spanish language writing to the sound of the names they heard, and the rules of Spanish were not so clear by the time, so for some, x was more like j ..

Take  for example the name Xavier, that is also written "Javier"  and the two sound the same in Spanish, but in Catalán or in Galitian  the names will be pronounce differently, and a lot of the times those Iberian languages change  the strong sound of the Spanish J for a softer sound and is represented with an x, names and words... in English it will sound like a SHH.

Now if you ask  a native American who speaks Nahuatl which is the language of the Aztecs how Mexico was called the will say Mexitl that sounds like Meshitl, Mexica is pronounce Meshica even today.

So my guess is that when rules of Spanish finally established there where a lot of places that kept the x, and not the J,

Mexico, Texas, Xalapa,  sounds Mejico, Tejas, Jalapa in today's Spanish.