TIL that "nginx" is pronounced "engine-x", and not "n-jinx"
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.
TIL some people pronounced it n-jinx
Wait till you find out about quay
I'm glad there's pronunciations provided, because to me it looks like it should sound like a slur.
My lead dev used to pronounce it njinx and I always needed some time to realize what he's talking about.
Nginx is atrocious. I about have a stroke every time I have to work with it. Caddy is 1000x easier to set up.
N-gin? Cortex's henchman???
En-eh hinks (with heavy Spanish accent)
Thank you for saving me from future embarrassment.
Or just becoming terminal "um actually"-er like I've become with epoch
I like to pronounce it as nginks like fucking inks. Yes, with a ng sound in the beginning.
Wait till you hear about SearXNG or SxncD
Now you'll tell me it's not pronounced Hap Roxy!
similar problem with kubectl
It's obviously kubecontrol! I will die on this hill.
Also, Containerd ... Not helped by the cli nerdctl.
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]?
We refer to it as kew-bee-cuttle
I split the middle with en-JIN-iks (which is how I heard it said long before I saw it written)
I laughed out loud when I first learned that imgur is supposed to be pronounced as "imager'... well you fuckin chose the wrong combination of letters for that didn't ya
Am I missing something? I've always pronounced it "imager". How else would you pronounce it?
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:
jif was copyrighted. gif was literally named after the peanut butter. it came with a jingle "choosy developers choose gif". How many different forms of proof do you need.
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
I pronounce k8s as k-eights sometimes on purpose to gauge the reactions
En Guh Inks
https://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/SillySounds/english.ogg (from back when many english speakers were still insistent that the i in Linux should be pronounced "eye")
I've never heard it pronounced any other way than "engine x".
I started using it around 2006, and even back then it listed the pronunciation on the site.
I've never heard it pronounced. Which is why I also thought it was "n-jinx"
nyuh-inks
When I first encountered it, it was by hearing it. It took longer than it probably should have to recognize that when people talked about “engine x”, they meant “in-jinks”
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).
Oh boy - finally a modern internet nerd argument equivalent to the pronunciation of GIF!
This surprised me too. But that was in 2012 😂
Make me
As always, first impressions count. There is no way I'm starting to call it engine x now, except for fun.
I thought it was pronounced N-G-N-X
Where did the I go?
To be or not to be, that is the question
Where did I come from?
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.
btrfs -> butterface
Thank you, i will call it that from now on
I can't read no, I can't read my butterface~
am i the only one who thought it was nyuh-inks
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've always pronounced it "not-Apache"
I always pronounced it engine-x (fluent as one word) but never thought of it meaning engine lol
n gin x -> en gin ex -> "enginex" spoken, nginx thought
Putting the gin in Nginx.
And JSON is pronounced “javascripton“
Oh my god it's Javascripton Bourne!
That is the lamest decepticon transformer I’ve ever heard of
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.
Wait, so this isn't a testosterone supplement?
When this baby hits 200rps, you’re gonna get some hairs on your chest
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...
"F-stab" is just more fun to say.
It'll forever be F-stab in my head
I was a non violent youth when I first saw an fstab, perhaps that got me thinking "F S tab"
f-s-tab is feeble. Unsatisfactory. Bureaucratic.
f-stab is jocose. Nonchalant. Sharp.
Is that pronounced as gokoze?
Whereas fsck, short for "file system check", should be pronounced "fisk" when someone in a suit is around, otherwise it's "fuck".
It's ef sock in my head
it kinda ends up as "fsuck" for me, which is apt-get when it doesn't magically fix all my filesystem issues
f*ck. You can even occasionally get away with spelling it like this
With the issues i had in the past with fstab, the desire to stab someone was certainly provoked.
Insert dank Winnie the Pooh meme here for F-STAB
N-jinks is silly, f-stab is cool.
That's... Unfortunate.
My workplace calls it "n-jinx", we know its nonstandard but its still what is understood by the team.
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
And is even worse sign if you need a document to describe how to pronounce its name. It is a sign you should pick another name.
Do our USAian overlords now require us to submit names to ensure those won't be mispronounced on purpose? You people are insufferable.
Who do you think I am?
Yeah, the j-sawn pronunciation is truly inexplicable. Who pronounces S-O-N "sawn"?
I believe the Greeks do where the name originates from.
hnn-geenks
Saying nginx with a "hard g" can get you into some real trouble...
Is that rap slang if you're referring to a lady? 😬🫣
The correct way is njinx because enginex is a dumb spelling and is too much like twitter
Can you believe that fucking dipshit ruined the letter X for all of us 😤
like how curl in my head is "curl" and not "c-url"
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]
🤔
C-url, like "sea earl"?
When I first heard someone say SCSI out loud describing the drives in a server, I responded with, "No, they're actually high-end drives."
I always think of this guy.
"nnnnn-ghinks"
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
the docs are under documentation, not on the homepage tho
Idiot. Using English letters to try to represent sounds they don't normally make. It didn't work for gif (pronounced commonly as gif instead of jif), why would they think it would work for them?
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.
There actually are rules. They're just complicated because English prefers to preserve the pronunciation of loan words without changing their spelling and English has a ton of loan words. If you ignore them, native English words are fairly consistent.
No, it's pronounced GIF
Also, the correct pronunciation for that Atlassian tool is "Gira".
"G" does normally make a "J" sound, though. Giraffe, the second G in garage and garbage, engine, gin, and so on.
And postgresql is pronounced post-gres-Q-L, even though it probably should be post-gre-SQL
A colleague pronounces it "Postgré"
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.
PSA: it's acshully pronounced "Postgre-squirrel".
Postgre-squirtle
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.
postgres2electricboogaloo
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.
Wow, I never knew people thought it was pronounced differently. Never even considered it looked like jinx.
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"
Well you see, this is software so the rules break down here in favor of cool. I guess I just grew up surrounded by naming conventions like that so could easily identify it.
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.
suddenly it all makes sense.
Same.
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
It's pronounced Throatwobbler Mangrove
You are a very silly man and I'm not going to interview you.
I called it n-jinx once. felt embarrassed for myself as soon as I said it.
called it engine-x ever since.
You have to say it in a commanding Japanese accent... Engine X
It sounds way cooler that way
like this?
Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX
🤌
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.
If there were a dash I would accept engine, ie n-gin-x.
But it's spelled enjinx
It took a while for me to get it, but it still read ngnix as "n.g. -nix" in my head.
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."