Watching him fight was a common pastime among MPs of the day, and he retired two years before the bell was installed. Heavyweight boxer Benjamin Caunt is another contender. One idea is that it was named after MP Benjamin Hall, rumoured to have been a fairly round chap, and responsible for overseeing the latter stages of the rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament, including the installation of the bell.

There are several theories as to who the eponymous sizeable Benjamin could have been, but none were documented well enough to be proven right. Now we've got that out of the way, we'll move on. More on that particular brand of pedantry here, but for the remainder of this article, we'll be using 'Big Ben' to refer to the whole package.

The clock is simply known as the Great Clock. If you're calling it St Stephen's Tower, you're well over a century behind the times. The tower is named the Elizabeth Tower (formerly the Clock Tower), a name it was officially given in 2012 to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's diamond jubilee. Big Ben is the name of the largest bell, and even that's a nickname and not an official one.

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