So is it spelled "Guernica" or "Gernika"?  "Echeverria" or "Etxeberria"? Is the city "San Sebastian" or "Donosti"?  Is it "ethorri" or "etorri"?  It depends on who is answering.  Astero makes primary use of the orthography of Euskara Batua.

any a foreign driver in the Basque country has been confounded by the road signs when they see two names for the next city.  The source of these multiple orthographies derives from the various languages of the region.  The Basque country is not a nation-state; i.e., you will not find the “ikurrina” or Basque flag at the United Nations in New York.  Centuries ago this area of western Europe was claimed by the emerging nations of Spain and France.  Thus three languages came to define this region:  the Basque language Euskara, Spanish and French. 

Spanish and French share a common Latin source from the language of the Romans since 2,000 years ago, whereas Euskara is distinctive—it has yet to be definitively linked with any other language in the world and it is older than its linguistic neighbors; the Basques were already there when the Romans found them and Spanish and French came along after that.  Euskara therefore is not like Spanish or French, but listeners oftentimes make that assumption when they overhear some locals conversing because Euskara adopted loan words from these Romance languages over the last few centuries; it also for a time adopted the Romance alphabet for spelling.  As Larry Trask found, for centuries there was no standard orthography in Basque.  Instead, Basque was written with Romance spelling conventions supplemented by various additional devices to represent sounds not present in Romance languages.

Historically there is a broad variation based on dialects and the use of Spanish and French orthography.  For example the earliest spelling of the Basque word for their language was in 1545 when Bernard Etxepare spelled it as Heufcara.  There then followed a whole other assortment of versions that have often been included in published works:  Eskuara, Euzkera, Euskara, Euskera, Uskara, etc.  Similarly, the Basque homeland in Europe is referred to as Euskal Herria, Euskadi, Eskual Herria, etc. 

Euskal Herria is the term used throughout the Basque country to refer to the homeland.  It literally means the "land of Basque speakers."  Euskadi, meanwhile, is a newer term developed by Sabino de Arana-Goiri, the founder of modern Basque nationalism, who invented this term a century ago to designate the political entity or nation-state.  He originally spelled the term with a "z" in place of the "s" and this further complicated the spelling of Basque terms.  Arana-Goiri hypothesized that a direct connection existed between the Basque root-word for sun and the Basque name for themselves.  He believed that eguzko-a ["of the sun"] paralleled euzko-a ["of the Basques"], thus suggesting that the Basques were "the sun people."  From this premise, he substituted the "z" spelling for terms such as Euskera and Euskal Herria.  Arana-Goiri's hypothesis of a link between the two terms could not be effectively substantiated and the "s" spelling became the norm.  But when some of our Basque clubs were founded, they went with how they had first seen it spelled using Arana's version; e.g., thus EuZkalduank rather than EuSkaldunak.

Basque orthography remained in a state of flux well into the 20^th century when the Euskaltzaindia endeavored to provide a common foundation.  Euskaltzaindia, or the Royal Academy of the Basque Lanuage (literally translated as "group of keepers of the Basque language") is the official academic institution which watches over Euskara.  It carries out research on the language, seeks to protect it, and establishes standards of use.

Euskaltzaindia has been a vocal and active advocate of the introduction of a unified dialect of the Basque language, known as Euskara Batua, or Unified Basque.  Basque consists of multiple dialects, and many people have seen this as a weakness in the language's fight for survival in a world in which minority languages spoken in states are wiped out by the states' official language.  Having been for centuries pressured on both sides by Spanish and French, and under the rule of Franco coming close to extinction, the Academy felt the need to create a unified dialect of Basque, in order that the language have a greater chance of survival. The new dialect of Basque was heavily based on the Gipuzkoan dialect of Donostia-San Sebastian - the dialect with the richest literary heritage. 

Before the unifying efforts of Euskaltzaindia, early Basque spelling was a mixed bag because of the diversity of Basque dialects and borrowed alphabets.   The Basque word was sounded out and matched to the existing spelling in those languages.  That is what explains the myriad ways of spelling Basque surnames for example.  The common surname of Etxeberria is also rendered as Etcheverry, Echeverria, Echavarria, etc.  Spelling is a neutral exercise because letters are random symbols that we associate with a particular meaning or sound in this case.  This assigning of meaning, however, varies from person to person.

Whereas some are not really bothered by the spelling or pronunciation of their Basque name, others take it more personally.  Thus when the Euskaltzaindia promulgated a new standard orthography, it was—and is still—resisted in some quarters.  Nevertheless, this new Basque alphabet or “agaka” has come close to universal acceptance among most Basques in Europe.  But has noted above, the same doesn’t necessarily apply to the Basque Diaspora because it was not directly involved in the evolution of the orthography back in Europe. 

Here too our Basque ancestors went through their own spelling evolution.  Somewhere along the line, someone gets to define the spelling of the family name and in my case it was my paternal grandfather who set our surname spelling as "Ysursa" when he applied for American citizenship.  Supposedly he went with the advice that it would be easier for Americans to pronounce (it was bad advice).  This new spelling represented a change from how he had previously spelled it as "Izurza" which derived from the Basque town of "Izurtza".  In this case, the T was likely dropped in the Spanish spelling because it impeded the Castilian lisp.  And so it went for many families.  Here in Chino, two brothers came up with two different spellings of their surname:  one went with Goyenetche while the other opted to drop the T and spelled it Goyeneche.  

Basque place names correspond to Spanish, French, or English ones as follows:

• Bizkaia = Vizcaya
• Gipuzkoa = Guipúzcoa
• Araba = Álava
• Nafarroa or Nafarroa Garaia = Navarre, Navarra
• Lapurdi = Labourd
• Nafarroa Beherea or Behe-Nafarroa or Baxenabarre = Lower Navarre, Basse-Navarre
• Zuberoa = Soule
• Bilbo = Bilbao
• Donostia = San Sebastian
• Gasteiz = Vitoria (official name is Vitoria-Gasteiz)
• Iruñea or Iruña = Pamplona
• Gernika = Guernica
• Baiona = Bayonne
• Miarritze = Biarritz

Apart from the orthography, there is also the issue of two distinct names for the same thing.  The present spelling of the Basque provinces, towns and dances have two names, or at least different spellings of the same name in Basque and Spanish or French.  Some names are very similar; e.g., Gernika is Basque while Guernica is Spanish, Bayonne is French for the Basque Baiona; dantza is Basque for the Spanish danza, etc.  Others are quite different; e.g., Iruña is the Basque name for Pamplona; Donostia is Basque for the Spanish San Sebastian; Donibane-Garazi is Basque for St. Jean Pied-de-Port; the Spanish danza de palos or "stick dance" is makil dantza in Basque, etc. 

A wild-card letter in the spelling of Euskara Batua is the letter H.  It is believed by specialists that the H was formerly present in all varieties of Basque.  According to Larry Trask, it seems the H was lost early in the center of the country (Gipuzkoa and Navarra), since there is no trace of it there in the medieval period. In Bizkaia and Araba, however, the letter H is very frequent in personal names and place names in the Middle Ages: for example, bahaheztu for modern maeztu, Elhorriaga for Elorriaga, etc. 

I remember hearing a story of how the late Joe Eiguren of Boise, a long-time teacher of Euskara who moved here long before Batua became the norm, handled the use of spelling with the letter H.  When writing a letter he would begin with writing a slew of h’s at the top of the page with the instruction:  “insert an H where you’d like.”

In recent times the H survived only in the Iparralde ("north side") of the French Basque Country.  Thus Basques on that side of the Pyrenees say, and have traditionally written, things like these: hori, hura, harri, herri, ekharri.  The challenge for the Euskaltzaindia was to find a viable compromise between the northern usage and southern non-use of the letter H.  The final decision was to use the H wherever the northerners used it except after a consonant.  So Ethorri became Etorri; Alhaba-alaba; senhar-senar, etc.  Larry Trask believed this to be an excellent decision:  "The northerners have a spelling that matches their pronunciation. The southerners have to learn where to put the Hs, but they're used to doing the same thing when writing Spanish. Moreover, the Batua orthography has the advantage of providing different spellings for words like hari, ari, and ahari which are often pronounced identically in the south -- or, come to that, for ahate ("duck") and ate ("door")."

The Basque letter, Basque name and approximate English pronunciation: a       a                 far b       be               bat d       de               down e       e                 get f       efe              favor g       ge               got h       hatxe        house i         i                 marine j        jota           hot; yet k       ka              king l        ele             league m      eme         mayor n       ene           narrow n~    en~e        o[ni]on o       o                coat p       pe             people r       erre          be[dd]ing s       ese           sea t       te             tea u       u              boot x       ekitz       fi[sh] z       zeta        miss

The Basque spelling debate is destined to endure as long as Basques survive, if for no other reason than we're Basque:  you put two Basques together and you'll get three opinions.  With a limited number of speakers (1 euskaldun per 10,000 people in the world), Euskara is a very personal language.  The language endures because we do take it personal--we want to see it survive.  So we'll have multiple spellings for the foreseeable future because I don't see too many changing the spelling of their names or club names, etc.  And so be it.  FYI--You'll find that most all of the spelling on this website will utilize Euskara Batua.

SOURCES:  The late Larry Trask, a leading Basque linguist & Wikipidea online encyclopedia