Wondering how (and why) the name of the 26th letter of the alphabet was changed from zed to zee by Americans (I’m assuming it’s an American phenomenon).
Sorry if this was asked before, but the search engine can’t handle 3 letter searches…
These people over a RH are first rate etymologist. Bookmark them for future reference.
“Zed’s dead baby. Zed’s dead.”
If the British could tae “aluminum” and change it to “aluminium” just to make it consistent with most of the other elements (“sodium”, “lithium”, “potassium”, etc.) , then Americans can take “zed” and change it to “zee” to be consistent with most of the other letter names (“cee”, “dee”, “eee”, “gee”, etc.)
Moderator’s Note: Since this is in zee wrong forum, I vill move it.
Off to GQ.
SDSTAFF Ian says: “The reason we don’t is because we had a pretty major falling out with the people that did, and in the aftermath, seized on dialectical nuances and amplified them. The last thing an American wanted to sound like after the Revolution was an Englishman, or vice-versa.”
Can you imagine all the post-Revolution Americans trying to work “zee” into a sentence just so as not to appear British? “Hi my name is Graham, and in case you’re wondering, it does not have a zee in it.”
It wasn’t really the case of the brits taking the word… You have to acknowledge that it was sir Humphrey Davy who named it., and you hardly get more Britsh than that. Most of the credit for confusing the name of the metal goes to him. Quoting from WorldWideWords
It has to be “zee”; otherwise the Alphabet Song doesn’t rhyme!
OK, next question. If “zed” comes from “zeta,” why don’t the British pronounce B as “bed?”
I’ve mentioned this before, but in Dr Seuss’ The Cat In The Hat Comes Back, there appears to have been a deliberate effort to make (some of) the verses work regardless of whether you say zee or zed.
Works just as well as:
And
Works as:
As noted in the Mailbag article, confusion (brainwashing) of Canadian kids can be attributed to the ABC song widely heard thanks to Sesame Street.
In school, it was a trivial fact that Canadians pronounced the last letter as zed, not zee because we aren’t American. Nonetheless it slipped into the everyday usage despite that ‘knowledge’.
One problem is that the rhyming of the ABC song is that vee doesn’t allow an easy reciting of the last letter as zed, it just sounds clunky and awkward. As a new parent, I’ve devised a new tune to recite the alphabet to…
‘This Old Man (Knick Knack Paddywhack)’
This old man, he played one.
A B C D, E F G
He played knick-knack on my drum,
H I J K LMNOP,
with a knick-knack paddywhack give the dog a bone,
Q R S T U V W,
this old man came rolling home.
X Y Zed and that’s the end.
No, it doesn’t perfectly match the meter of the song, but it’s pretty close and it’s fun to sing.
Why bother? I suppose that Canadians just like to keep our ‘distinct society’. I still write colour, neighbour, flavour, and pronounce lieutenant (leftenant)…well, okay I don’t do that last one…
wumpus - bed for bee would just sound silly…:rolleyes: 
When our five year old daughter MilliCal found out that other people pronounce “Zee” as “Zed”, she thought it was the coolest thing ever, and took advantage of every opportunity to pronounce it “Zed”.
Whatever happened to that bearded trio Zed Zed Top? Are they still around?
Many things do sound better using Zed instead of Zee. Examples:
Slogan of discount department store: “Zellers. Where everything starts with zed.”
The early personal computer, ZX 81: “zedex eighty-one”
Led Zeppelin, the rock band: “Led Zed”
Certain car models: 240z, 250z, etc: “zed-cars”
Admittedly, though, “Zee Zee Topp” sounds better than “Zed Zed Topp”. And every Canadian I’ve heard mention that band said “Zee Zee Topp”. After all, they’re from another country with different usage and that’s how they say their name.
When I first came to Canada in 1968, I always said “zee” and all the students said “zed”. Over the years, I have adjusted (although it still feels funny) and say “zed”, but now most of the students say “zee”. In fact, last year I taught a graduate course to three students, all of whom said “zee”. To be sure, one was American, but the second was Canadian and the third was Ukrainian. I think Sesame Street is a bigger culprit than the Alphabet song, which has been around a lot longer, with no effect AFAIK.
Actually it makes a lot of sense. If we really followed the Greek model generally, our alphabet would sound like
alph, bed, cam, del, eps, phi, gam, eta, iot, jot, kap, lam, mu, nu, om, pi, kop, ro, sig, tau, ups, ??, ??, xi, ??, zed. (V, W, and Y are all derived from upsilon, so it is hard to guess what they would have been named.)
Gee I still do the same thing! (It’s pretty easy when you’re doing a lot of physics and high-redshift astronomy, though.) Except, when I’m talking with someone from the United States, I intentionally use “zed”, and when I’m talking with anyone else, I intentionally switch back and forth, to keep them on their toes. 
I’m in Canada and when I’m talking to American customers at work, I have to say “zee”. When I first started there, I would say “zed” (because it was what came naturally) and basically no one knew what it meant. No matter how many times I said it. Now I use “zee” out of habit.
I figured all Americans would know that “zee” and “zed” are interchangable, but I was wrong. Even when I said, “zed–like zebra”, they’d say, “no, it’s ZEE like ZEEBRA!” heh