jujitsu spelling

any reason why its spelled jujitsu in stead of jiu jitsu?
just curious

Not really. :)

The Brazilians tend for Jiu-Jitsu, whilst the Japanese go for Ju-Jitsu, or of course, Jujitsu, or even jujutsu, with some universities just teaching Jitsu.

No doubt someone else will clear it up in more detail with a bit of history.

When the Gracies renamed the judo they learned from Maeda, they couldn't spell.

The reason for this was because Japanese was romanised differently back then.
There is no 'letter' in the Japanese hiragana alphabet that corresponds to the sound 'ju'.
To write that you take Ji and add a small (half-sized) yu. The Y is not pronnounced so it becomes the sound we all know as 'ju' (Ji+u). It used to be romanised that way but now it's romanised as Ju.
Similarly to make 'ja' you write Ji and a half-sized ya (Ji+a).
Same sound, different way of writing it in English is all.
It's now romanised as ju which is just a changing of the times. Sounds like v and ti were often not used in the past as they were foreign sounds (v replaced with b, and ti with tchi). Nowadays however we live in an increasingly globalised world and there is alot more English incorporated into the Japanese language so they can say (and write) 'v' and 'ti' sounds.

So yeah, no biggie it's still the same word ;)