Still, Big Ben is the name of the bell, not the name of the tower.

OK, hereâ??s the final word on the tower that houses Big Ben.

No it’s not…

The building to which the tower is attached is the Palace of Westminster. The palace contains the Houses of Parliament, but that is not the name of the building. The tower is St Stephenâ??s Tower. The clock, AFAIK, has no name. The large bell that is housed in St Stephenâ??s tower is called Big Ben.

Wrong, it’s only known as “The Clock Tower” St. Stephens Tower is the middle tower.

http://www.parliament.uk/about/images/exterior/ststephens.cfm

Quite right, Doug. I would recommend “Mother Tongue” by Bill Bryson, in which he uncovers that many of the “Americanisms” that are criticised in the UK actually started here, got shipped over the Atlantic, and then fell out of favour here.

Since English has borrowed from so many other languages, the pronunciation of that last letter has remained “zed” over here (in common with several other European languages) and become “zee” in America. Thus, the name of that letter is pronounced one way in Europe and another way in America. If I can live with “zee” in Americans’ speech, I’m sure they can live with “zed” in Europeans’.

Doug again:
“Criticism of others for continuing that pattern is unjustified and hypocritical. ”

I would qualify this, Doug. I agree with you up to a point, but if the change of usage obscures the meaning of a word, I would argue against it. English has become a worldwide lingua franca (I love the irony of that expression). To retain its value as a means of communication across all sorts of boundaries, it has to retain some measure of consistency. If, for instance, we had a word meaning one thing in Europe, another in America, yet another in Asia and so on, it will be bound to cause confusion.

The same goes for spelling. Pronunciations are extremely idiosyncratic, but if the spelling is (mostly) consistent, people from different parts of the world can still use English to communicate. An example used by Bill Bryson was the word “girl”. In various parts of Britan and America, it is variously pronounced “gerl”, “gel”, “gurrul”, “goil”, “gal” and several others. But, by retaining its spelling, it remains comprehensible (most especially, of course, in written English).

The building to which the tower is attached is the Palace of Westminster. The palace contains the Houses of Parliament, but that is not the name of the building. The tower is St Stephen’s Tower. The clock, AFAIK, has no name. The large bell that is housed in St Stephen’s tower is called Big Ben.

However, if you call it St Stephen’s tower, only a few people will know what you are talking about, so calling it “the Big Ben clock tower” (or “Big Ben’s clock tower”) is actually clearer.

However, calling the tower Big Ben is just plain out-and-out wrong. Calling me a pedant will not change this fact.

Here’s a picture of St Stephen’s Tower:
http://www.artofthestate.co.uk/london_photos/st_stephens_tower.htm

It’s not ZedZed Top… it’s DoubleZed Top!
Along with Blink One-Eight-Two and Gloria ESS-te-FAHN.

Wouldn’t that be a “pair o’ docs”?

J/P=?

Wait… weren’t you annexed into the Desperation Compound? Or was that the Duchy Of Bill Smith?

Man, we *really* have to update the property maps here at the Compound.