The 10 Most Mispronounced Terms in IT (And How to Say Them Right)

We’ve all been there. You’re in a meeting, confidently discussing your tech stack, when suddenly you hear a colleague pronounce “NGINX” as “en-jinx” instead of “engine-X.” Or maybe you’ve been the one saying “post-gree” for years, only to discover it’s actually “post-gres.”

The tech world is full of these pronunciation landmines. Unlike other industries where you might hear terms spoken aloud regularly, developers often encounter new technologies through documentation, tutorials, and Stack Overflow posts. By the time we actually need to say these words out loud, we’ve already been pronouncing them in our heads for months—often incorrectly.

This isn’t just about sounding smart in meetings (though that’s a nice bonus). Clear communication matters when you’re discussing architecture decisions, debugging issues with teammates, or interviewing for your next role. Plus, knowing the story behind these pronunciations often reveals interesting tech history.

So let’s settle some debates and learn the correct pronunciations of the most commonly mispronounced terms in IT, along with the fascinating reasons why we get them wrong.

1. Linux

Correct: “LIN-ucks” (short ‘i’ as in ‘pin’)
Common: “LIE-nucks” or “LEE-nooks”
Background: Creator Linus Torvalds recorded an audio file clarifying: “Hello, this is Linus Torvalds, and I pronounce Linux as ‘LIN-ucks’.” Named after himself (Linus) + Unix. The mispronunciation often comes from people applying English pronunciation rules to what they assume is a made-up tech word.

2. PostgreSQL / Postgres

Correct: “post-gres-Q-L” or just “post-gres”
Common: “post-gree” or “post-gree-SQL”
Background: Originally POSTGRES (Post-Ingres), named as the successor to the Ingres database. When SQL support was added in 1996, it became PostgreSQL. The community accepts both the full name and “Postgres” as a shortened version, but dropping the ‘s’ is incorrect.

3. Jira

Correct: “JEE-rah”
Common: “JI-rah” (as in ‘giraffe’)
Background: Named after “Gojira,” the Japanese name for Godzilla. Atlassian’s founders were fans of the monster movies. The correct pronunciation follows the Japanese origin, though many English speakers naturally read it with a soft ‘g’ sound.

4. NGINX

Correct: “engine-X”
Common: “en-jinx” or “N-G-I-N-X”
Background: Created by Igor Sysoev, it’s a play on “engine” + “X” (for excellence). Many people see the string of consonants and try to pronounce it phonetically, not realizing it’s meant to be read as two English words.

5. Ubuntu

Correct: “oo-BOON-too”
Common: “you-bun-too” or “oo-bun-too”
Background: A Zulu/Xhosa word meaning “humanity towards others” or “I am because we are.” Mark Shuttleworth chose this South African philosophy term for his Debian-based distribution to represent open source community values.

6. sudo

Correct: “soo-doo” (rhymes with “voodoo”)
Common: “soo-doh” or “pseudo”
Background: Stands for “substitute user do” or “superuser do.” Created in 1980, it allows users to run commands with other users’ privileges. The “do” ending makes sense as it’s about “doing” something with elevated privileges.

7. Kubernetes

Correct: “koo-ber-NET-eez”
Common: “koo-ber-NAY-tees” or “koo-ber-NEE-tees”
Background: Greek for “helmsman” or “pilot” (κυβερνήτης). Google’s container orchestration system follows Greek pronunciation rules, but many English speakers apply Latin pronunciation patterns instead, leading to the common “NAY-tees” ending.

8. GIF

Correct: “jif” (according to creator)
Common: “gif” with hard G
Background: Steve Wilhite created the Graphics Interchange Format in 1987 and has been adamant it’s pronounced “jif.” He even displayed “It’s pronounced ‘JIF'” at his 2013 Webby Award acceptance. Despite this, the hard-G camp argues “graphics” starts with a hard G. Oxford dictionaries now list both, but the creator’s intent was “jif.”

9. Redis

Correct: “RED-iss”
Common: “ree-DEES” or “REE-dis”
Background: Creator Salvatore Sanfilippo has stated it’s pronounced “RED-iss.” The name stands for “Remote Dictionary Server,” and the pronunciation emphasizes the “RED” part. Commonly used as a cache and message broker in cloud-native architectures, but many pronounce it with emphasis on the second syllable.

10. daemon

Correct: “DEE-mon”
Common: “DAY-mon”
Background: In computing, these background processes take their name from Maxwell’s demon, a thought experiment in physics. The pronunciation follows the original Greek δαίμων (daimon), not the modern English “demon.”

Why These Mispronunciations Persist

The tech industry’s global nature means terms spread through written documentation rather than spoken conversation. Developers often work remotely, learn through reading, and may go years without hearing terms spoken aloud. Regional accents and language backgrounds further complicate this, creating pockets of different pronunciations that become locally “correct” even when they differ from the original.

The beauty of open source and global tech communities is that we all bring our own linguistic backgrounds to the table. While it’s useful to know the “official” pronunciations, what matters most is that we understand each other. Still, next time you’re in a meeting and someone says “post-gree,” you’ll know why—and maybe you can gently share the story of Post-Ingres.