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TIL that "nginx" is pronounced "engine-x", and not "n-jinx" (self.programmer_humor)

submitted 1 day ago by Kalcifer to c/[email protected]

278 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 minute ago

I used jif files in the 90s. Sure they were less common but they existed. Everyone I knew said gif like gift in the 90s. I sure other people said jif instead. But I'm not making this up. Your experiences aren't necessarily universal.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Bah, I was there. .jif was barely used and came 5 years after. They should have used a different name!