However, some prominent American brands, such as George Dickel, Maker's Mark, and Old Forester (all made by different companies), use the whisky spelling on their labels, and the Standards of Identity for Distilled Spirits, the legal regulations for spirit in the US, also use the whisky spelling throughout. Since the 1960s, American writers have increasingly used whiskey as the accepted spelling for aged grain spirits made in the US and whisky for aged grain spirits made outside the US. From the late eighteenth century to the mid twentieth century, American writers used both spellings interchangeably until the introduction of newspaper style guides. In the US, the usage has not always been consistent. The spelling whiskey is common in Ireland and the United States, while whisky is used in all other whisky-producing countries. There is general agreement that when quoting the proper name printed on a label, the spelling on the label should not be altered. One is that the spelling difference is simply a matter of regional language convention for the spelling of a word, indicating that the spelling varies depending on the intended audience or the background or personal preferences of the writer (like the difference between color and colour or recognize and recognise), and the other is that the spelling should depend on the style or origin of the spirit being described.

There are two schools of thought on the issue. Much is made of the word's two spellings: whisky and whiskey. Early forms of the word in English included uskebeaghe (1581), usquebaugh (1610), usquebath (1621), and usquebae (1715).

This was translated into Old Irish as uisce beatha, which became Uisce beatha ( Irish pronunciation: ) in Irish and uisge beatha in Scottish Gaelic. Distilled alcohol was known in Latin as aqua vitae ('water of life'). This Gaelic word shares its ultimate origins with Germanic water and Slavic voda of the same meaning. The word whisky (or whiskey) is an anglicisation of the Classical Gaelic word uisce (or uisge) meaning 'water' (now written as uisce in Modern Irish, and uisge in Scottish Gaelic). 5.5 Flavours and colouring from additives.

Canadian whiskey