Origin of 'Daemon' in Computing

I believe it officially is pronounced the same as demon. But colloquially I hear a lot of (and sometimes find myself using) “damon”.

I’m in the Matt Damon camp. Always pronounced it that way, never really gave it much thought. Just seems “right” to me.

And now we can perhaps hash out whether the `lib` in `/usr/lib` is pronounced with a long or short 'i'. I hope I'm not the only one who pronounced it the first way with no real thought, and never noticed until I heard someone else say it with a long 'i' that that was obviously the logical pronunciation.

Surely the logical pronunciation is the way you'd pronounce it in library, so a long 'ai' rather than any kind of 'i'? Though I personally always use the short 'i'. I was going to justify that by saying it's the same as /usr/bin, but that's also short for binaries, so should also be an 'ai'.

I've been pronouncing it with the short 'i' for 30 years, but mainly, possibly only, in my head.

In 1998 I started a new job, and my boss pronounced "URL" as "earl". That threw me for a loop, had to fight my way through our first conversation before I figured out what he was saying.

I pronounce API as "appy", which sometimes draws quizzical looks (people think I'm using next-level cutesy slang for "application"). But I never could do the "earl" thing. Or "sequel".

I have always pronounced lib like the word liberal.

I was mind-blown the first time I heard someone pronounce etc as "et-see".

et-see rolls off the tongue so much better than ee-tee-see that it makes perfect sense now.

> Surely the logical pronunciation is the way you'd pronounce it in library, so a long 'ai' rather than any kind of 'i'?

Yep, that's what I meant to say with:

> … never noticed until I heard someone else say it with a long 'i' that that was obviously the logical pronunciation.

But maybe the sentence structure was too tortured for it to be clear what I was saying.

> Though I personally always use the short 'i'. I was going to justify that by saying it's the same as /usr/bin, but that's also short for binaries, so should also be an 'ai'.

Oh, shoot, even after I noticed the logical pronunciation of "lib" (long 'i') it never occurred to me that the same applied to "bin". I guess I just can't say any paths out loud any more.

Hard agree. It's an archaic word, it seems a shame not to revel in that fact whenever you use it! I've been using "automata" a lot recently, and that's another one that is just more fun the unusual way. Also it helps that it's clear either way -- no one will be confused upon hearing "daymon" even if they're not used to it, unlike "etsee", "user-slash-libe", "user-slash-bine". Or, god forbid, "oo-zir slash"...

Perhaps the difference for you is that "bin" is already an English word with an official pronunciation.

Personally, I also use short-i for "lib," because I tend to pronounce shortenings of text as if they were words themselves.

Do you pronounce the vowel in /var as in "bar" or as in "bare"?

Also, for those who try to pronounce everything rather than spell them out, where does it end?

I now have a newly discovered, morbid interest in how such folks say path elements like "selinux", "httpd", and "pgsql"...

> that's what I meant to say

Ah, that makes sense. I thought you meant long 'i' as in extending the duration of the 'i' sound, like in 'beep' vs 'bip'.

I've pronounced it as `etcet` as short for `et cetera`. But that's probably my Australian habit of shortening everything.

> Do you pronounce the vowel in /var as in "bar" or as in "bare"?

Ha, they're everywhere!