TIL that "nginx" is pronounced "engine-x", and not "n-jinx"

And JSON is pronounced “javascripton“

Oh my god it's Javascripton Bourne!
Occasionally i feel myself longing back to the good ol' JSOFF times.
That is the lamest decepticon transformer I’ve ever heard of
JavaScript is actually pronounced with a g.
- Gagascript. One is soft, one is hard.
- GuavaScript?
  Edit: of course that's actually a thing.
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.
- Jason = jay-sun
  JSON = jay-sawn
- They're joking. js doesn't even officially stand for JavaScript due to Oracle's IP claim over the JavaScript name.
- GIF like Geoffrey the giraffe, if you get my gist. Always has been.

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

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...

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"
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
f-s-tab is feeble. Unsatisfactory. Bureaucratic.
f-stab is jocose. Nonchalant. Sharp.
- F-s-tab is boba
  F-stab is kiki
- Is that pronounced as gokoze?
"F-stab" is just more fun to say.
Insert dank Winnie the Pooh meme here for F-STAB
That's... Unfortunate.
With the issues i had in the past with fstab, the desire to stab someone was certainly provoked.
I guess some people might go with f-s-tayb, but I wouldn't necessary recognise what they were saying.
N-jinks is silly, f-stab is cool.

Yeah, the j-sawn pronunciation is truly inexplicable. Who pronounces S-O-N "sawn"?
- I believe the Greeks do where the name originates from.
  https://youtu.be/sDTf0-j_Dyk

I've always pronounced it "not-Apache"

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

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:
  That's what the format's creator named it.
  It's weird, but "soft G" is a thing and acronyms and the only "rule" for pronouncing acronyms is "it's easy to say".
  It annoys people that are way too invested in it. Sure, it's immature -- but it's low stakes and not particularly "shitty". I enjoy it and you only YOLO once.
- Or with a Đ.
- 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.
Am I missing something? I've always pronounced it "imager". How else would you pronounce it?
- 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.

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:
https://media.merriam-webster.com/soundc11/c/curl0001.wav
https://curl.se/docs/faq.html#What_is_cURL
…it's not "curl"?
EDIT (2025-02-27T04:15Z):
cURL (pronounced like "curl", /kɜːrl/) […] [1]
🤔
This is "jif" levels of upsetting me
C-url, like "sea earl"?

And GIF is pronounced GIF

PNG is pronounced "PING!"
careful there buddy
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!

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."

And I will always pronounce SQL as “squeal”

I say PSQL as Pee Sequel
- I say FAQ as fuck you.
My brain first interpreted SQL as 'squirrel' and that now refuses to relinquish its claim as default pronunciation in my mind.
- genius
- I still say it this way in my head...
That's great actually!

I've never heard it pronounced any other way than "engine x".

I've never heard it pronounced. Which is why I also thought it was "n-jinx"
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).
nyuh-inks
I started using it around 2006, and even back then it listed the pronunciation on the site.

And postgresql is pronounced post-gres-Q-L, even though it probably should be post-gre-SQL

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.
- 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.
- squeal
- “S-Q-L ‘aight” for SQLite?
- Sequel was a whole different language.
  I thought Sequel was an earlier version of SQL. That's what I remember reading when I looked it up.
- I pronounce it sqill.
- It's actually pronounced "squirrel"
PSA: it's acshully pronounced "Postgre-squirrel".
- Postgre-squirtle
What’s the difference? Those read the same to me. Do you mean that you want a strong gap between “gre” and the S in S-Q-L?
- The first one is post-grez-queue-el, the second one is post-gree-es-queue-el
A colleague pronounces it "Postgré"

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.

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

btrfs -> butterface

Thank you, i will call it that from now on
I can't read no, I can't read my butterface~

My workplace calls it "n-jinx", we know its nonstandard but its still what is understood by the team.

As always, first impressions count. There is no way I'm starting to call it engine x now, except for fun.

I've done a semi-exception in the case of Xitter. I like this new name Elon chose because it brings the possiblity of playful sounds. Same goes to Xitler.
- In Chinese, "X" makes a "sh" sound.
  Take from that what you will.

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.
- Ha! There's probably some other layer of theology there when you consider that that G stands for "Gine" pronounced like "Djinn."
Where did the I go?
- To be or not to be, that is the question
- Where did I come from?

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.
- See also ghoti (fish). English orthography only works by agreement, not rules
- 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?
- Just say gif like gnome
- 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.
- so I assume you also say "jit-hub"?
It's pronounced GIF
- 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.

"nnnnn-ghinks"

You have to say it in a commanding Japanese accent... Engine X

It sounds way cooler that way

- 🤌
- Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX

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."

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
I pronounce k8s as k-eights sometimes on purpose to gauge the reactions
- 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

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.

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:
ɲ ^[1]
ŋ ^[2]
- Nope.

Make me

It's pronounced Throatwobbler Mangrove

You are a very silly man and I'm not going to interview you.

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? 😬🫣

I will be dead and buried in the ground before I call nginx "engine x"

How do you pronounce it?
Really weird hill to die on, but okay.

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 can't stop pronouncing USAID as u said even after i finally heard it instead of just reading it

You just made me laugh halfway through a yawn.
This is hilarious
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
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?

“Nugginx” is how I have always read it

As a scandi Iv'e been leaning more into 'enginks' - close to 'engangs' and french kinks.

Wow, I pronounced it N-G-X. Don't know why.

It took a while for me to get it, but it still read ngnix as "n.g. -nix" in my head.

Getting into documentation is dangerous territory.. Try not to make a habit of it!

Oh boy - finally a modern internet nerd argument equivalent to the pronunciation of GIF!

This surprised me too. But that was in 2012 😂

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")