 Several hundred years later (circa 1513), when Portuguese sailors landed and asked the name of the place, the locals replied "媽閣" ().The Portuguese then named the peninsula "Macao" and several hundred years after that (circa 1911) they changed the spelling to "Macau" as part of the Reforms of Portuguese orthography.Today the two spellings remain in common use due to the transcription of place names in two different Chinese dialects.