Orthography of geographical specific epithet

[Guido at]

ICBN states (art. 60.1) that the original spelling of the epithet has to be
retained except in the case of typographical or orthographical errors.
Geographical names are often misspelled because people are not familiar
(enough) with them. Will a rather frequent (how frequent?) misspelling
become an "acceptable" orthographical variant in the sense that epithets
based on this error don't have to be corrected?

An example (there are others...)
Although the "correct" spelling is Guadeloupe (French) or Guadalupe
(Spanish) we may estimate that it is wrongly written in about 2% of the
cases (based on a Google search hit rate of 969000 for Guadeloupe against
18600 for Guadaloupe and 639000 for Guadalupe against 9040 against
Guadelupe). This is reflected in taxonomy. A quick IPNI search shows us that
the botanical specific epithet based on the French spelling guadeloup
(-ensis, -ense, -ae) has been used for 10 species against guadaloup (-ensis,
-se) for 8 species. For the Spanish spelling we have 83 guadalup (-ensis,
-ense, -ana) against 11 guadelup (-ensis, -ensi)
In the French group 1 species is mentioned with both ways of spelling and in
the Spanish group this is the case for 3 species. To make it complete: 4
species are mentioned with both a French and a Spanish based specific
epithet...

Guido Mathieu
Ghent University (Belgium)