Fez or Fes? Why Morocco's Oldest Imperial City Has Two Spellings

If you've seen both "Fez" and "Fes" while researching a Morocco trip and wondered whether they're two different places, they're not. It's one city, Morocco's oldest imperial capital, spelled two ways depending on which language is doing the spelling. Nobody is wrong here, and you won't end up in the wrong city no matter which one you type into a search bar or a booking form.

The short version: "Fès" (with the accent) is the French spelling, and French is Morocco's administrative second language, a legacy of the French protectorate era that still shapes road signs, official documents, and most Moroccan government material. "Fez" is the standard English spelling, the one used in English-language guidebooks, most airlines, and by English speakers generally. Both come from the same Arabic root, فاس (Fās), and both are reasonable attempts to render an Arabic sound into a different alphabet. Neither is a mistake; they're just the English and French versions of the same word, the way "Florence" and "Firenze" both refer to the same Italian city.

You'll actually see this pattern across Morocco. Marrakech is also written "Marrakesh" in a lot of English writing, particularly American sources, and nobody treats that as controversial either. City names that predate modern standardized transliteration systems tend to pick up more than one accepted spelling as they pass through different languages, and Morocco, with its layered history of Arabic, Amazigh, French, and Spanish influence, has more of these than most countries.

Here's the detail most people don't know: the fez hat, the red felt cap with a flat top and a black tassel that shows up in old photographs and Ottoman-era paintings, is named directly after this city. The dye historically used to color the hats a deep crimson red was a specialty of Fez, produced from a local plant source and closely associated with the city's ancient dyeing and craft traditions, the same tanning and dyeing quarter you can still walk through today at the Chouara Tannery. The hat traveled around the Mediterranean and the Ottoman Empire; the name traveled with it, and it stuck in English long after the hat itself fell out of everyday fashion.

For practical purposes, it makes no difference which spelling you use. The airport code is FEZ (Fès–Saïss Airport) regardless of how you spell the city in your search. Google Maps, every major booking platform, and every airline recognize both spellings interchangeably and will take you to the same place. If you're writing in English, "Fez" is the more common and more easily readable choice, and it's what most English-language travel content, including this site, uses consistently. If you're reading French sources, booking through a French platform, or looking at Moroccan road signage, you'll see "Fès" instead, and that's just as correct.

None of this changes anything about the city itself: the 9,000-alley medina, the world's oldest continuously operating university, the tanneries, the medersas, is the same extraordinary place no matter which four or five letters you use to find it. If you're planning a visit, the spelling question is genuinely the least interesting thing about Fez, and it's worth spending far more time on the medina itself than on the label.