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Zee is spelled Zed Eee Eee

Sunday, September 13, 2009 by Dave Winer.

A picture named theTruthCanBeAdjusted.jpgMy FriendFeed friend Zee is in town for a conference, and he's worried about how Americans will take to his name. At first I was puzzled. What's so hard about the name Zee, I wondered. I had only seen it spelled out -- Zee -- cause we've never talked verbally only digitally. Permalink to this paragraph

He explained: "I got a blank stare when I first said it in Starbucks. The barista asked, how do you spell that? I said 'Zed', 'E', 'E'. Received a blank stare. Then I said 'Zee', 'E', 'E', which then got him a little more confused." Permalink to this paragraph

Ahhh I get it now. His name is the same as the first letter in his name when you say it in American English. In British English there's no such confusion.  Permalink to this paragraph

After a bit of back and forth I came up with a suggestion. Permalink to this paragraph

Make up some long incomprehensible name that begins with Z (how about Zarathustra). When you get the puzzled look, say "My friends call me Zee." They'll like that for two reasons: 1. They don't have to remember the name and 2. You said you want to be a friend. Americans generally like this. A picture named sidesmiley.gif Permalink to this paragraph

Just a slice of life on the Internets.  Permalink to this paragraph




 
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A picture named dave.jpgDave Winer, 54, pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in Berkeley, California.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

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