Thou whoreson Zed, thou unnecessary letter!

I spend a fair bit of time talking to Americans and try not to give it away that I am Made in Canada, however I sometimes sell myself out.  I have to spell out letters occasionally and am always thrown into a panic when 'z' comes up. The dreaded letter "z" as it's come to be. I even went so far as to write it down next to my computer for easy reference. Today, my first instinct when i came across Z was to say ZEE so i (wrongly) assumed it was my Canadian-go-to and picked ZED instead. I was met with confused silence. I threw out a fake cough and started again this time pronouncing it Zee much to my caller's relief.

I decided the way to combat this problem was to do some research, then decided to make it a twofer and blog about it as well. I am always shocked, amazed and pleased at how there is always a website with the exact answer I need. Bill Casselman is like a Canadian-word spokesman or something. He has a page dedicated to the difference between zed and zee, apparently i am not the ONLY person who is concerned with this. He is officially on my list of Awesome Individuals -don't worry one day you might make it there too! (PS, his website is http://www.billcasselman.com/). Here's what he has to say:

Because it entered French from Latin as zeta, it became zède in modern French, zeta in modern Spanish and Italian, and zed in English. The Romans borrowed the letter from the Greeks where it is zeta.

Zed was not uttered affectionately from the lips of every English speaker. Hundreds of years after it entered our alphabet, certain literary types were still bitching about it. “Thou whoreson Zed, thou unnecessary letter!” yells Kent to Oswald during their slanging fight in Act 2 of Shakespeare’s King Lear.

In the first great dictionary of English in 1755 (there were other, lesser word lists printed earlier), Dr. Johnson opined “Z . . . zed, more commonly izzard or uzzard.” The names izzard and uzzard have not totally melted in the obscuring fog of history. Check this 1947 opinion from the Court of Appeals of Kentucky: “If this contract is valid, its provisions are all binding and effective from A to Izzard.” From A to izzard is a folk expression now rare or vanished that implies inclusivity.

In 1828 Noah Webster, the mighty American wielder of word clout, guaranteed that zee would predominate in the United States. In Webster’s magisterial American Dictionary of the English Language he stated: “Z... It is pronounced zee.”

The Concise Oxford Companion states, “The modification of zed ... to zee appears to have been by analogy with bee, dee, vee, etc.” Lye’s New Spelling Book (1677) was the first to list “zee” as a correct pronunciation.

I love that excerpt for a few reasons, first the Shakespeare quote is hilarious- whoreson, what an unusually fantastic thing to yell at a letter! Also, "from A to Izzard" is a great little all inclusive saying that i am going to adopt into my phrase collection. Moving on- so basically, people changed the pronunciation of zee to make it a better rhyming letter and to spite the British. Canadians know that singing the alphabet song is rather embarrassing when we have to sing... Y and Zed, now you know your ABCs next time won't you sing with ME! ME? that doesn't rhyme with Zed. Terrible song! We need to Canadianize it so we don't sound like idiots. Maybe it should be Sing with Fred or Sing in your head or maybe we should scrap the Zed from our alphabet. Not like we use it very often, there's about 3 words i can think of that we would have to come up with a new spelling for. I feel like it'd be a fun project. What should we change Zoo and Zebra to? Foo and Febra? I like. I will send my suggestions to Merriam Webster and get the ball rolling.

I tried to find some amusing pictures of "Z" but the results consisted mainly of Jay-Z and Dragonball-Z and i felt neither with appropriate for this blog, so I'm using a large pink font in lieu.