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In American Spanish there is a linguistic phenomenon called "seseo" (to pronounce Z and C+E/C+I like S). This coincidence of sounds causes some typos, logically.
In the case of the surnames, there are a lot of Spanish surnames ended in -ez, "son of" (Hern¨¢ndez, Fern¨¢ndez, Gonz¨¢lez), but the word is always accented on the penyltimate syllable.
In a "seseant" context, some surnames ended in -es (Cort¨¦s, for example) altered their spelling to -ez (for the influence of the -ez surnames): same pronunciation (Cort¨¦s/Cortez), spelling like other surnames.
But, when Cortez is pronounced in Spain (not in "seseant" dialects), the pronounce is [kor'te¦È], not [kor'tes] (Cort¨¦s).