WASHINGTON  When is the word “British” an international insult?

When officials in the Obama White House combine it with another word: “petroleum.”

Outrage is brewing on the other side of the Atlantic over the Obama administration’s repeated use of the name “British Petroleum” for BP, the oil company responsible for the spill that has devastated the Gulf of Mexico. British Petroleum is actually the former name of the company, which now officially goes by BP  a fact that seems to have escaped some of the White House’s most prominent spokesmen and other high-ranking Washington officials.

Mr. Obama himself seems mostly to use BP. But the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, and the Coast Guard commander in charge of responding to the spill, Adm. Thad W. Allen, have been using British Petroleum interchangeably with BP in their public remarks. So have the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the House majority leader, Representative Steny H. Hoyer.

This does not sit well with some ink-stained wretches (or clean-fingered bloggers) across the pond, who are wondering aloud just how special the “special relationship” between the two countries still is.