Party vs alliance?

I'm not sure I'm posting in the right part of the forums, but this is something that's been bugging me for a while... Not in a major way, obviously, seeing how I'm only now bringing it up; indeed it is a rather minor detail. And I'm not sure if anyone else has pointed this out yet.

So my issue is: I've been under the impression that an alliance is a group of three full parties. 3 × 8 = 24 people. It's one alliance that gets through Labyrinth of the Ancients, and Syrcus Tower, and World of Darkness. Yet, in the HUD, the parties are named "Alliance A", "Alliance B", "Alliance C". The party I am in? It has "Alliance" on top of the name list. The other two parties? They have "Alliance" above the health bars of the members. All these, the way I understand it, should say "Party", and not "Alliance", because the alliance is the group of 3 full parties.

Is this an English-only thing? Is this something that has been or can be explained away with something trivial? Am I the one completely wrong about the concept? :confused: I would really like to know. And if it's a bug, I hope it can be fixed sometime.



ALSO: PLEASE REMOVE THE CHARACTER LIMIT. IT'S ARBITRARY, IT CAN BE BYPASSED, IT'S OBSOLETE, IT SERVES NO PURPOSE OTHER THAN ANNOYANCE. THANK YOU.

I believe that this is one of those little English quirks. Alliance can both mean the relationship between multiple groups as well as the smaller groups of participants.
definitions
"a merging of efforts or interests"
"the person's or entities so allied"
So both instances are properly usage because the parties than enter into an alliance are each alliances within the alliance.

It is definitely not an English only problem. We have the same issue in French: party is équipe, alliance is alliance but party A is also written as Alliance A instead of Équipe A, etc.

It's bugged me also from the release of 2.1 :).