Programmer Humor @programming.dev Kalcifer @sh.itjust.works 2d ago

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.

References

Title (website): "nginx". Publisher: NGINX. Accessed: 2025-02-26T23:25Z. URI: https://nginx.org/en/.
- §"nginx". ¶1.

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273 comments

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]?
  
  References
  
  Type: Documentation. Title: "Command line tool (kubectl)". Publisher: Kubernetes. Published: 2024-01-01T21:15-08:00. Accessed: 2025-02-28T11:01Z. URI: https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/kubectl/.
  
  Type: Article. Title: "How to pronounce Kubernetes so you don’t get laughed at". Author: "Blue Matador". Publisher: "Blue Matador, Inc.". Published: 2020-06-03. Accessed: 2025-02-28T11:07Z. URI: https://www.bluematador.com/blog/how-to-pronounce-kubernetes.
  
  §"So, how do you pronounce Kubernetes?".
  
  Kubernetes is pronounced coo-ber-net-ees […]
  
  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
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  Or with a Đ.
- 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.
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
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!
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'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).
- I started using it around 2006, and even back then it listed the pronunciation on the site.
This surprised me too. But that was in 2012 😂
Oh boy - finally a modern internet nerd argument equivalent to the pronunciation of GIF!
Make me
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
- Where did the I go?
  
  To be or not to be, that is the question
  
  Where did I come from?
- 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."
And GIF is pronounced GIF
- PNG is pronounced "PING!"
  
  CMYK is pronounced smück.
  
  The fuck?!
  
  Lo and behold,
  
  P[i]NG
  
  P- iNG
- They can pry my /ɡɪf/ from my cold dead hands.
  
  /dʒɪf/ heretics can burn
- careful there buddy
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.
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 😤
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, @[email protected], I was wrong in my initial interpretation ^[1.2]. So, from what I can tell, you are, in actuality, the only one itt! 😊
  
  References
  
  Type: Post. "TIL that "nginx" is pronounced "engine-x", and not "n-jinx"". Author: "Kalcifer" @[email protected]. Publisher: "Programmer Humor" [email protected]. sh.itjust.works. Lemmy. Published: 2025-02-26T23:27:35Z. URI: https://sh.itjust.works/post/33487588.
  
  Type: Comment. Author: @[email protected]. Published: 2025-02-27T00:18:34Z. Accessed: 2025-02-28T06:38Z. URI: https://sh.itjust.works/post/33487588/16948274.
  
  I always heard it as /ŋiŋks/ in my mind
  
  Type: Comment. Author: @[email protected]. Published: 2025-02-28T09:09:54. Accessed: 2025-02-28T10:24Z. URI: https://sh.itjust.works/post/33487588/16975245.
  
  Nope.
  
  The thread from which that quote originated was as follows:
  
  TIL that "nginx" is pronounced "engine-x", and not "n-jinx" […]
  
  I always heard it as /ŋiŋks/ in my mind
  
  Do you mean /ɲiɲks/? […]
  
  Nope.
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!
- 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.
- 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.
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.
- N-jinks is silly, f-stab is cool.
- Insert dank Winnie the Pooh meme here for F-STAB
- That's... Unfortunate.
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
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.
  
  https://youtu.be/sDTf0-j_Dyk
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? 😬🫣
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]
  
  🤔
  
  References
  
  Title (article): "cURL". Publisher: Wikipedia. Published: 2025-02-20T12:12Z. Accessed: 2025-02-27T04:17Z. URI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CURL.
  
  ¶1
- C-url, like "sea earl"?
- This is "jif" levels of upsetting me
"nnnnn-ghinks"
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.
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.
  
  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.
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.
  
  It's actually pronounced "squirrel"
  
  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.
  
  squeal
  
  “S-Q-L ‘aight” for SQLite?
  
  I pronounce it sqill.
- 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
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."
I always heard it as /ŋiŋks/ in my mind
- Do you mean /ɲiɲks/?
  
  Here are the sounds for each:
  
  ɲ ^[1]
  
  ŋ ^[2]
  
  Referencs
  
  Type: Article. Title: "Voiced palatal nasal". Publisher: Wikipedia. Published: 2025-02-20T17:37Z. Accessed: 2025-02-28T06:58Z. URI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_palatal_nasal.
  
  The audio file is found by clicking "source" for the audio in the infobox.
  
  Type Article. Title: "Voiced velar nasal". Publisher: Wikipedia. Published: 2025-02-09T14:27Z. Accessed: 2025-02-28T06:59Z. URI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_velar_nasal.
  
  The audio file is found by clicking "source" for the audio in the infobox.
  
  Nope.
- 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
  
  On https://www.ipachart.com/ you can click on every symbol to hear it.
I can't stop pronouncing USAID as u said even after i finally heard it instead of just reading it
- Oh damn, I’m gonna be thinking of it as that now too
- This is hilarious
- You just made me laugh halfway through a yawn.
Does this mean when you go into an airport bathroom and see the hand dryer, you know it's called an XLerator (ex-LAIReighter)?
I will be dead and buried in the ground before I call nginx "engine x"
- Really weird hill to die on, but okay.
- How do you pronounce it?
“Nugginx” is how I have always read it
- As a scandi Iv'e been leaning more into 'enginks' - close to 'engangs' and french kinks.
I just kind of knew that, but not sure how.
Wow, I pronounced it N-G-X. Don't know why.
Getting into documentation is dangerous territory.. Try not to make a habit of it!
I'm not sure what the English pronunciation of "n-jinx" sounds like but I'm pronouncing it "engines" as in plural of engine.
- Um das mal phonetisch zu schreiben: Es würd sich ungefähr wie "en dschinks" auf Deutsch anhören.
  
  en-dschiniks
Omg really was someone pronouncing like "njinks"??? Wtf is wrong with you lol
you mean its not En Gee Nix?
Not En Jinnicks?
It's short enough I just spell it out
The meaning kind of clicked to me the first time I've seen the word and tried to pronounce it - it ended as [ẽ.'ʒĩ 'ʃis], the first part is close enough to English [ˈɛnd͡ʒɪn] ⟨engine⟩ that the association was obvious. ([ʃis] is just the Portuguese name for ⟨X⟩.)
https://youtu.be/tyQvjKqXA0Y
@Kalcifer And
(At least in some LATAM places) SQL is "pronounced" as SEQUEL...
Don’t wanna yuck y’all’s yum but gross
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.
I look forward to the day when all these lame-ass, insider naming conventions are looked down upon as the stupid things they are.

Wtf does "en jinx" or "engine X" have to do with it's functionality?

I hate looking for an app on my phone that does a particular thing but hell if I can recall what the idiot developed called it.
- Things like that are called "jargon" and are perfectly normal and acceptable in a given field, always been that way.
  
  If you don't know how to pronounce, or even spell, NGINX, you probably have no use for it.
- N. Gin X
  
  It's this guy in powered up Boss form

273 comments