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.

References
  1. Title (website): “nginx”. Publisher: NGINX. Accessed: 2025-02-26T23:25Z. URI: https://nginx.org/en/.
    • §“nginx”. ¶1.
    • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe
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      14 days ago

      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.

        • lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com
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          14 days ago

          No, it’s pronounced Jason. Douglas Crockford was just too laissez-faire to correct anyone on it probably because he didn’t give a fuck.

          • rishado@lemmy.world
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            13 days ago

            If you really just say Jason instead of jaysawn/J-sohn you’re nuts and probably drive everyone crazy with that

            • lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com
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              13 days ago

              You & your buddies can keep pronouncing it jaysawn & sounding like complete dorks if it makes you feel better. However, it was clearly intended to be pronounced naturally as Jason like its inventor pronounces it.

              Believing otherwise is almost as bad as the plebs who think the symbol ∅ is inspired by Greek letter φ instead of Scandinavian letter Ø.

              • rishado@lemmy.world
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                13 days ago

                Didn’t realize I was buddies with 99% of everyone that’s interacted with JSON!

                Also didn’t know people used the term ‘plebs’ unironically, you sound like an absolute joy to be around

                • lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com
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                  13 days ago

                  You seem in irrational need for validation of your pronunciation despite clear justification against it. Cool ad populum. Fly that insecurity flag high.

      • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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        14 days ago

        They’re joking. js doesn’t even officially stand for JavaScript due to Oracle’s IP claim over the JavaScript name.

        • warm@kbin.earth
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          14 days ago

          I always thought the G stood for graphics, but now I know it stands for giraffics.

          • JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca
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            14 days ago

            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.

            • tyler@programming.dev
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              14 days ago

              SCUBA and NASA are always the ones I use against that argument. It would be Skuh-baa instead of scooba, and neh-sa instead of nah-suh.

              And no matter what way it was spelled, it’s the only word we’re still arguing about that literally has a song to go with it to make sure everyone pronounced it correctly. It’s pretty clearly a soft g, because it was a marketing trick, not a dictionary word. It doesn’t have to follow any rules of English, just like all those companies just removing random letters and changing ck for x, etc. Flickr, tumblr, Grindr, scribd, Lyft, Kwik, Cheez, etc etc etc. Twitter was originally even twttr.

              • criitz@reddthat.com
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                14 days ago

                People forget in the 90s/00s both GIF and JIF were relatively common image file types. It was only logical to use the hard G for GIF. So that’s how we used it. This overrules all arguments of how acronyms work or what the creator originally called it.

                • tyler@programming.dev
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                  12 days ago

                  nobody was using jif as a file type in the 90s, and no it wasn’t “only logical to use the hard G”. There are plenty of sources stating that no one pronounced it with a soft g up until it got popular as an image format on social media. It was universally understood to be a play on the peanut butter name. There are plenty of sources on this, I’m sorry but you’re either just making shit up or you were the only person to call it with a hard g in the 90s.

            • AA5B@lemmy.world
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              13 days ago

              You don’t say “sue-knee” for “CUNY” (City University of New York) Etc.

              Of course not, then it would conflict with SUNY (State University of New York)

            • Horse {they/them}@lemmygrad.ml
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              11 days ago

              I use both pronunciations, but the only argument I’ve ever believed for the proper one is that the creator pronounced it “jif”

              Yeah, but they’re wrong, so it’s hard G

  • perviouslyiner@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    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…

  • vanta@lemm.ee
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    14 days ago

    like how curl in my head is “curl” and not “c-url”

  • orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    14 days ago

    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.”

  • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    Wow, I never knew people thought it was pronounced differently. Never even considered it looked like jinx.

    • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe
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      14 days ago

      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”

      • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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        14 days ago

        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.

      • ignirtoq@fedia.io
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        14 days ago

        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.

        • tyler@programming.dev
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          14 days ago

          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

  • Chris@feddit.uk
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    14 days ago

    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.

  • DavidGA@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

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

    • camh@programming.dev
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      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.

    • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe
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      14 days ago

      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.

    • GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org
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      14 days ago

      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.

    • Hawke@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      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?

  • psud@aussie.zone
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    14 days ago

    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?

    • eighty@aussie.zone
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      14 days ago

      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.

      • psud@aussie.zone
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        14 days ago

        See also ghoti (fish). English orthography only works by agreement, not rules

      • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        14 days ago

        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?

  • Limonene@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    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.”

  • Blaster M@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

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

    It sounds way cooler that way