Brits enter fiery debate over ‘actual’ title for TV distant – from zapper to buttons
Us Brits love sitting in front of the TV, whether that’s binging the latest Netflix series or using it as background noise while you scroll on the phone. But, what’s that thing we use to control the it…
In what is becoming the next ‘great’ divide of this country, Brits have entered a fiery debate over what is the ‘correct’ name of TV remote – and we’re trying to solve it.
We’ve had the north vs south and bap vs roll, but this argument is a lot more complex than most. Often debates are two-sided. However, this one is an exception to the rule as it looks like no one can agree.
Nothing is better than being a couch potato and grabbing the TV remote to switch on some mindless reality show or, perhaps, a true crime doc.
But, hang on. Have we said something wrong there? Would you too grab the television remote or would it just be the ‘remote’ – or even the ‘zapper’? If you’re Scottish, it could even be the ‘buttons’.
You might be thinking that everyone else calls the TV ‘thing’ by its formal name, the television remote.
Although, you’d be wrong, very very wrong.
It seems that no one can agree on what it should ‘really’ be called. One viral thread on social media site Reddit ranks ‘the remote’ as the most popular term for it, according to The Mirror, however there are far more creative alternatives too.
One user on the site calls it an ‘Ian’ and another ‘the doofer’. Another has named it a ‘zapper’ – but that could be ‘a North West thing’. ‘Clicker’ and ‘the buttons’ were also other popular suggestions, while other options included ‘the dibbler’, ‘the fiddle stick’, and ‘megatron’.
It turns out that ‘clicker’ is often used by Americans and apparently in Poland they call it a ‘pilot’ – and some Brits over on TikTok have adopted these for their own TV remotes.
The debate has also spilled out onto X too. One user on the site wrote: “I’m dating a girl who calls the remote control ‘the doofer’, which is my way of saying, ‘I’m newly single’.”
Meanwhile, survey in 2016 revealed that Brits have more than 100 different names for their remotes. First place in the list went to ‘remote’, while ‘doofer’ or ‘doofah’ came in second place.
‘Zapper’ was ranked third, followed by ‘clicker’ and ‘flicker’ finishing up the top five. Completing the top ten was ‘thing-a-ma-jig’, ‘switcher’, ‘watcha-ma-call-it’, ‘the controller’ (or the controls) and ‘gizmo’.
Let us know what you call the television remote by leaving a comment!
