TIL that "nginx" is pronounced "engine-x", and not "n-jinx"
a year ago by Kalcifer to c/programmer_humor
nginx ("engine x") is an HTTP web server, reverse proxy, content cache, load balancer, TCP/UDP proxy server, and mail proxy server. […] [1]
I still pronounce it as "n-jinx" in my head.
Oh my god it's Javascripton Bourne!
It's a real book 💀
That is the lamest decepticon transformer I’ve ever heard of
Gagascript. One is soft, one is hard.
GuavaScript?
Wtf?
It's Jason. If they wanted it pronounced that way, they should've spelled it differently...
Like GIF
Sorry, no, at least one could argue GIF. JSON is a single freakin' vowel short of a common male name.
Morons.
They're joking. js doesn't even officially stand for JavaScript due to Oracle's IP claim over the JavaScript name.
Oracle probably makes more money from the dmca than their actual products tbh.
Oracle actually making products and services is only their side hustle
GIF like Geoffrey the giraffe, if you get my gist. Always has been.
It doesn't matter what it stands for. That's not how acronyms work.
You don't say "yolwa" for "YOLO"
You don't say "Ah-ih-dees" for "AIDS"
You don't say "britches" for "BRICS"
You don't say "sue-knee" for "CUNY" (City University of New York)
Etc.
And if you want to argue specifically about G:
You don't say "Jad" for "GAD" (generalized anxiety disorder)
You don't say "joes" for "GOES" (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite)
It's not a hill I'm going to die on, I use both pronunciations, but the only argument I've ever believed for the proper one is that the creator pronounced it "jif". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF#Pronunciation
Now let's talk about "gibs" you heathens.
Jrafics.
I've been pronouncing it N-gin-X, which is probably close enough once slurred together
I always called it “in-gen-ix”, which doesn’t even make sense now that I think about it.
Unless you’re from New Zealand
Uhn-jun-uhks in NZ TYVM.
There's a linux file called fstab which is often pronounced f-s-tab because it's a table of file systems. It was somewhat surprising to hear Dave Plummer pronounce it as "f-stab", as in stabbing someone...
Whereas fsck, short for "file system check", should be pronounced "fisk" when someone in a suit is around, otherwise it's "fuck".
f-s-tab is feeble. Unsatisfactory. Bureaucratic.
f-stab is jocose. Nonchalant. Sharp.
F-s-tab is boba
F-stab is kiki
N-jinks is silly, f-stab is cool.
I believe the Greeks do where the name originates from.
1000% I say gif too, like gift. If you wanted it pronounced like “jiff” then you should have spelled it with a J.
I flew from Jermany to Tanzania and saw some jeriatric jiraffes.
I say it "Jif" because:
Choosy moms choose Dzhif.
as it's spelled: im gur.
It's one thing to name it imgr, but putting a fucking u after the g makes it a hard g in literally every instance. the letter u is the reason the g is pronounced as a hard g in words that otherwise wouldn't need a u: fragile / guile, digest / guest, etc.
it's spelled img - ur
no, it's spelled imgur. I know what img stands for which is why I said it would be one thing to call it imgr. the u doesn't make sense and it hardens the g. it's funny that you talk about how it's customary that img stands for image but you act like 'ur' is also a thing by itself.
well it is, just not in that way. if your img-ur breakup made any sense for pronouncing img as if it's independent then why not consider what ur stands for? it's a shortening of your or you're. so why not pronounce it image your? because it's bullshit and the spelling is ridiculous.
I've always pronounced it "not-Apache"
It is pronounced like "curl" though!
We pronounce curl with an initial k sound. It rhymes with words like girl and earl. This is a short WAV file to help you:
…it's not "curl"?
EDIT (2025-02-27T04:15Z):
cURL (pronounced like "curl", /kɜːrl/) […] [1]
🤔
This is "jif" levels of upsetting me
I pronounce gif like zyhfe to annoy both jif and gif pronouncers equally. I also advocate for the initial array index to be .5 to be equally annoying to programmers and mathematicians alike.
I also advocate for the initial array index to be .5 to be equally annoying to programmers and mathematicians alike.
Monster!
Lo and behold,
P[i]NG
CMYK is pronounced smück.
They can pry my /ɡɪf/ from my cold dead hands.
/dʒɪf/ heretics can burn
No no, we won't be having any of that. It's not GIF it's GIF!
And I will always pronounce SQL as “squeal”
genius
I still say it this way in my head...
That's great actually!
I heard it spoken first as well, but I ended up seeing it in text form not long after. I think it would have been more confusing if that hadn't been the era of internet companies thinking they were clever if they dropped a letter (usually a vowel).
I just pronounce it postgres. That's the original name of the database. It originally had its own query language (quel), and SQL was later retrofitted onto it and called PostgreSQL. But the original quel language is long gone that we may as well go back to calling it just Postgres.
I just say "post grezz sequel". Sorry if it pisses people off, but it's a stupid name, so I'm gonna say it the way I want.
PSA: it's acshully pronounced "Postgre-squirrel".
Postgre-squirtle
SQL is not traditionally pronounced like "sequel". Sequel was a whole different language.
Official pronunciation for MySQL, SQLite, and PostgreSQL all pronounce each letter.
But "sequel" is probably more common at this point and some of them include it as an alternate pronunciation now.
squeal
Something like that, yes. More info at https://english.stackexchange.com/... with links to videos of Richard Hipp (creator of SQLite) pronouncing it.
I actually couldn't find a section on pronunciation in the official FAQ, though I think it was there in the past. Still, they do use phrases such as "an SQLite database", indicating that "SQLite" starts with a vowel sound.
Hmm. According to Wikipedia you are correct, and the original SEQUEL was simply renamed to SQL. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL#History
I'm not sure how much that original SEQUEL/SQL has in common with later publicly-available SQL implementations. I never personally worked with SEQUEL but I was under the impression it was more of a spiritual predecessor to SQL than a direct ancestor. But I trust Wikipedia more than I trust my my memory here, so I guess I was wrong.
It's actually pronounced "squirrel"
I pronounce it sqill.
Rules of English, the closest I'd come is n-jinx. You don't pronounce letters individually, unless reciting the alphabet or something.
Unless you pronounce the letter "B" the same way you say it, like the bug that makes honey.
We don't say "beenefits" or "bee eee an eee eef eye tee ess"
Why would I pronounce something with rules of English that's not an English word? When I say the word jalapeno, I pronounce the tilde on the n even though in English it's neither written with the tilde nor written with a letter combination that would produce that sound through standard English spelling.
Yeah lots of people don’t realize that 1. English rules don’t matter a majority of the time, 2. English has a lot of loan words that people mispronounce, not just mispronounce from the perspective of the owning language but from an English rules perspective as well, and 3. Proper nouns don’t give a shit about anything. GIF is a proper noun, created and owned by a company. They get to call it whatever they want and the rules of the language don’t matter. I
that's not how most people do though, a lot of people will nativize words to the language they're speaking or are most used to. Like with your example of "jalapeno" that's.. one of the more famous words for people to pronounce in wild ways, there's a video of a swedish guy who manages to turn it into "japaleno" because that's more compatible with swedish.
btrfs -> butterface
Thank you, i will call it that from now on
I can't read no, I can't read my butterface~
I went for n-ginx too. I've known for a while that it's actually n-gin-x but have to think carefully to not revert back.
"Engine-X" just sounds dumber. N-ginx for life
I thought it was pronounced N-G-N-X
NGNX, the other tetragrammaton.
Although I'm Jewish, so I should probably write it N-NX.
I'm OOTL.
That is the protagonist from the (IMHO excellent) movie Equilibrium. He describes himself as a "tetragrammaton cleric." Prior to your comment, I didn't know the first word had any actual real world meaning, so that's where my mind went when I saw you use it. (Apologies if this is disrespectful to the intent of the word.)
As an interesting side note, supposedly that movie is what got Christian Bale cast as Batman.
Ha! There's probably some other layer of theology there when you consider that that G stands for "Gine" pronounced like "Djinn."
To be or not to be, that is the question
Where did I come from?
first rule of english pronunciation: there are no rules. All that matters is if people understand what you mean when you say it.
I gave up on this discussion when you have to consider gin, generate, giraffe, gene, gym, etc
Also I pronounce it with the soft sound because that's what it sounds like in the bloody alphabet.
See also ghoti (fish).
I'll be the first to say that English is a mess. However, there are rules, and this word breaks them.
That "gh" never appears at the beginning of a word, always at the end (as in "enough"). That "ti" is never at the end of a word; it's always inside (as in "nation").
Ah, a VSauce Fan
Also I pronounce it with the soft sound because that's what it sounds like in the bloody alphabet.
How do you pronounce the words "Cat celebration?" Is it "Kat kelebration" or "sat selebration?" I'm guessing the latter since that's how C is pronounced in the bloody alphabet?
Good thing you're not German or gay would be "Guh-ypsilon."
No, and you don't say juitar (guitar), jame (game), or jallon (gallon), either.
Yeah, because those all start with gu or ga.
Also, the correct pronunciation for that Atlassian tool is "Gira".
One time I was getting estimates for server software for an embedded device I had made. In a teleconference, I told one company that our prototype server ran on nginx. They emailed us an estimate saying we had to switch our embedded system to Windows 10 IoT Enterprise, and put the server on Microsoft's cloud, because "Engine X is not an enterprise web server."
Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX
Putting the gin in Nginx.
I always heard it as /ŋiŋks/ in my mind
Ok so I know what ŋ sounds like but I bet there are some idiots here who don’t, so maybe explain it.
For them
In relation to English, it's the "ng" sound in the common "-ing" ending or suffix.
Wikipedia has an entire article on it (of course): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_velar_nasal
Do you mean /ɲiɲks/?
Here are the sounds for each:
Nope.
TIL some people pronounced it n-jinx
I mean every time I hear about the damn thing it's because it's been misconfigured and is causing some fucking ruckus. The whole thing is cursed so jinx really feels appropriate where I'm standing from.
I think software name pronunciation discussions are so hilariously absurd that I sometimes purposefully vocalise nginx as “Nuhh Ginks” just to put a hat on it
En Guh Inks
Wait do you mean “kates” or “Kay-Eights”? I think either makes sense and I wouldn’t raise an eyebrow
If you said it like “Kuhh-Eights” I would probably laugh
Make me
Is that rap slang if you're referring to a lady? 😬🫣
It's pronounced Throatwobbler Mangrove
I will be dead and buried in the ground before I call nginx "engine x"
You just made me laugh halfway through a yawn.
Oh damn, I’m gonna be thinking of it as that now too
If you want people to pronounce your project name correctly you should spell it that way. Having a FAQ on pronunciation means you've messed up and lost already. Want it to be called "Engine X"? Call it "Engine X".
My favourite is SAP not wanting people to call it Sap but to spell it out S.A.P. Well sorry, but it's a CVC word, literally the first kind of word everyone learns.
even a dash, ngin-x, would do it really
Who do you think I am?
It took a while for me to get it, but it still read ngnix as "n.g. -nix" in my head.
It's, ummm, literally the first thing on the website (nginx.org). Tell me you didn't read the docs without telling me you didn't read the docs
https://kernel.org/... (from back when many english speakers were still insistent that the i in Linux should be pronounced "eye")
Hm, my guess would be either "cube control" or "cube C-T-L".
EDIT (2025-02-28T09:02Z): Hm, actually, given that it's for Kubernetes ^[1]^, maybe it's "koob control" or "koob C-T-L"… ^[2]^?
Kubernetes is pronounced coo-ber-net-ees […]
you mean its not En Gee Nix?
It's short enough I just spell it out
I've always pronounced it "In-jen-iks". I blame Jurassic Park and it's fictional biotech company InGen, but it does kinda also sound like "eugenics". But I dunno man, if you want everyone to pronounce your software a specific way maybe spell it in a manner where the pronunciation is more obvious? Just a thought.
Yes, like the Vietnamese name "Nguyen", but not like "wininks". The best I could describe it is as a hybrid between "ninks" and "ginks". Pronounce the first consonant with the back of your tongue while keeping the image of pronouncing an "n" sound in your head.
No ^[1.1]^.
EDIT 2025-02-28T10:17Z: Actually, @Aatube@kbin.melroy.org, I was wrong in my initial interpretation ^[1.2]^. So, from what I can tell, you are, in actuality, the only one itt! 😊
I always heard it as /ŋiŋks/ in my mind
Nope.
TIL that "nginx" is pronounced "engine-x", and not "n-jinx" […]
I always heard it as /ŋiŋks/ in my mind
Do you mean /ɲiɲks/? […]
Nope.
I split the middle with en-JIN-iks (which is how I heard it said long before I saw it written)
I just kind of knew that, but not sure how.
Wait, so this isn't a testosterone supplement?
When this baby hits 200rps, you’re gonna get some hairs on your chest
I really dislike the trend of made up pronunciations. I can accept that gnome is with an audible g since that makes more sense than a silent g, but nginx can be at best similar to engine-x, but even then it's more like the n in dnd rather than en.
And ngrok is en-grok, not en-jii-rok...
Um das mal phonetisch zu schreiben: Es würd sich ungefähr wie "en dschinks" auf Deutsch anhören.
Does this mean when you go into an airport bathroom and see the hand dryer, you know it's called an XLerator (ex-LAIReighter)?
The meaning kind of clicked to me the first time I've seen the word and tried to pronounce it - it ended as [ẽ.'ʒĩ 'ʃis], the first part is close enough to English [ˈɛnd͡ʒɪn] ⟨engine⟩ that the association was obvious. ([ʃis] is just the Portuguese name for ⟨X⟩.)
@Kalcifer And
(At least in some LATAM places) SQL is "pronounced" as SEQUEL...
I look forward to the day when all these lame-ass, insider naming conventions are looked down upon as the stupid things they are.
Wtf does "en jinx" or "engine X" have to do with it's functionality?
I hate looking for an app on my phone that does a particular thing but hell if I can recall what the idiot developed called it.
Things like that are called "jargon" and are perfectly normal and acceptable in a given field, always been that way.
If you don't know how to pronounce, or even spell, NGINX, you probably have no use for it.
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And JSON is pronounced “javascripton“
save