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
- Title (website): “nginx”. Publisher: NGINX. Accessed: 2025-02-26T23:25Z. URI: https://nginx.org/en/.
- §“nginx”. ¶1.
It took a while for me to get it, but it still read ngnix as “n.g. -nix” in my head.
Who cares? Pronounce it whichever way you want as long as it’s clear/understandable. It would take longer for me to understand what piece of software engine-x is, but it takes a second at most.
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.
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
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Nginx is atrocious. I about have a stroke every time I have to work with it. Caddy is 1000x easier to set up.
And JSON is pronounced “javascripton“
Occasionally i feel myself longing back to the good ol’ JSOFF times.
It’s a real book 💀
It’s fantastic too!
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-sawnNo, it’s pronounced Jason. Douglas Crockford was just too laissez-faire to correct anyone on it probably because he didn’t give a fuck.
If you really just say Jason instead of jaysawn/J-sohn you’re nuts and probably drive everyone crazy with that
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.
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
You seem in irrational need for validation of your pronunciation despite clear justification against it. Cool ad populum. Fly that insecurity flag high.
They’re joking. js doesn’t even officially stand for JavaScript due to Oracle’s IP claim over the JavaScript name.
And even more annoying, JavaScript is not correctly uppercased for common styles
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.
I always thought the G stood for graphics, but now I know it stands for giraffics.
JPEG = “jay-feg”
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.
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)
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
I thought we were having a bit of a joke, but then you really went and gave me a gift of paragraphs.
I think the creator was keeping the joke running by saying that. The word gift is why people prefer to say gif over jif, it’s how we were taught to pronounce “gif”. The rest of the g words are irrelevant to be honest.
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.
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.
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.
Bah, I was there. .jif was barely used and came 5 years after. They should have used a different name!
Jrafics.
JavaScript is actually pronounced with a g.
Gagascript. One is soft, one is hard.
That is the lamest decepticon transformer I’ve ever heard of
Oh my god it’s Javascripton Bourne!
It’s short enough I just spell it out
I’m glad there’s pronunciations provided, because to me it looks like it should sound like a slur.
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
My lead dev used to pronounce it njinx and I always needed some time to realize what he’s talking about.
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-s-tab is feeble. Unsatisfactory. Bureaucratic.
f-stab is jocose. Nonchalant. Sharp.
F-s-tab is boba
F-stab is kiki
“F-stab” is just more fun to say.
That’s… Unfortunate.
With the issues i had in the past with fstab, the desire to stab someone was certainly provoked.
Whereas fsck, short for “file system check”, should be pronounced “fisk” when someone in a suit is around, otherwise it’s “fuck”.
f*ck. You can even occasionally get away with spelling it like this
it kinda ends up as “fsuck” for me, which is apt-get when it doesn’t magically fix all my filesystem issues
It’s ef sock in my head
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”
Insert dank Winnie the Pooh meme here for F-STAB
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.”
Wait till you find out about quay
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.