In most English-speaking countries, including Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, the letter's name is "zed" , reflecting its derivation from the Greek "zeta" (this dates to Latin, which borrowed X, Y, and Z from Greek, along with their names), but in American English its name is "zee" , analogous to the names for B, C, D, etc., and deriving from a late 17th-century English dialectal form. American English does use "zed" for certain special purposes, such as on the radio, or as a nickname for a person whose name starts with Z.