Zed, Not Z

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Gillian from Fort Worth, Texas.

Hi, Gillian. How are you doing? Welcome to the program.

Oh, thank you. It’s great to talk to you. How are you?

Gillian, what are you calling us about?

Well, today I’m calling you because I’m puzzled about something.

I’m from British Guyana, formerly called British Guyana. It’s now called Guyana.

Okay, right.

And when I was there as a kid, when I say the alphabet, we say X, Y, Z, as in Z, E, D.

And I came to the United States, and you say Z as in Z-E-E.

And I just always wanted to know why it’s that way.

Great question.

As an adult now who’s lived in the United States for quite a while, what do you say?

I say Z because I was T so much I learned not to say Zed.

Ha, yeah, that makes sense.

Well, Gillian, it’s a good question, and there’s a pretty straightforward answer, which is that that final letter in the alphabet, the name of it goes all the way back to ancient Greek and ancient Rome.

If you’re walking around campus, you may see fraternities that have the letter Zeta in it.

Right.

Right.

And that came into the Romance languages like Theta in Spain and a ZED sounding word in French.

And so it appears that originally that name for that last letter found its way into English through medieval French, where it sounded more like Zed.

But it took a long time for the name for that letter to settle in in the English language.

Isn’t that right, Grant?

That’s right, yeah.

There are many dialectical variants of Zed or Zee or Izzard or Izzard or Zard and Zad and all these different ones.

And so when all these people came to the United States from the British Isles, they brought more than one pronunciation with them.

Right. But good old Noah Webster, back in 1828, published a dictionary that a lot of people try to adhere to.

And he said unequivocally that this letter is pronounced Z.

So the same guy who took out the U in color and the U in favor and that kind of thing decided.

Well, that’s the way we do it in Guyana.

Right.

With the U.

Right. I figured. Right.

So he wanted to differentiate between British English and American English.

Oh, cool.

And so he’s the one who decided it would be Z, and thereafter people began using Z.

But interestingly, if you say zeta, it is not the last letter in the Greek alphabet.

The last letter in the Greek alphabet is omega.

Omega, you’re right, busted.

Well, because I belong to a sorority that’s zeta phi beta.

Okay.

So that’s why I know that.

Okay, you’re exactly right.

Right, the Romans tacked it on to the end of their alphabet.

They borrowed that Greek zeta.

But you’re right, it’s much closer to the beginning of the Greek alphabet, right?

Right.

Okay, well, that’s interesting.

Well, thank you for…

I’m glad to hear that answer, and thank you very much.

Thank you, Gillian.

And take good care. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Good luck with your studies.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Your questions about language, grammar, pronunciation, spelling, anything are welcome to words@waywordradio.org or give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.