Typo perhaps not Google's after all...

So yesterday I posted about how I had found a typo in the name of a fracture zone in Google Earth's Ocean layer.

The Vernadsky fracture zone (~ 7º10'43" N and 34º35'05"W) is spelled "Vernadskiy" in Google Earth.

The IHO-IOC GEBCO Gazetteer of Undersea Feature Names (2009) lists the spelling as Vernadsky, and I took this as gospel, since this document tends to be to go-to document to check the name of any feature on the seafloor.

The feature is named after the very famous Russian geochemist Vladimir I. Vernadsky, considered one of the founders of geochemistry. I did a search and actually found several references to him using both spellings, including this one:

Vernadksiy Tavricheskiy National University in the Ukraine. Now I would imagine that if they are going to name a university after someone, they make sure to spell the name right.

So perhaps the misspelling is in the actual Gazetteer and not Google. This guy is pretty famous, he is considered one of the founders of geochemistry, so you would think this would be easier to sort out.

I suppose it could be due to the westernized spelling of an eastern name, in which case, the eastern spelling (Vernadskiy) should be the correct one.

Hmmm...