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View Poll Results: How do you pronounce the word daemon in a Linux context?
In Philip Pullman's fantasy epic His Dark Materials, every character is accompanied by an animal familiar called a daemon, which represents that person's soul. Although he uses this spelling, which is Latin and should therefore be pronounced "daimon"/"dymon", his preferred pronunciation is "demon". Maybe that's just a dig at the Christian Church, which he hates. But it got me thinking.
I have always thought of background daemon processes in Linux as being pronounced in the Latin or Greek way, but that may be because I did Latin at school. In those days, you needed O-level Latin to get into the best universities. I doubt if many people study it today outside the public school system. So do people on this forum say "dymon" or "demon"?
I too needed Latin for university admission — it took me three attempts to get that O level! Since the syllabus had changed before the third attempt, I got to read a lot of Latin.
Latin words borrowed into English are traditionally pronounced as English: you don't pronounce Caesar as Kysar (I hope, but one never knows these days). So, daemon = demon. Greek is different, as most Greek words used in English are "quoted" rather than "adopted" — hence daimon is "dymone".
...I used to work with a person who persistently tried to pronounce Linux as Leenux.
I say Li-nooks (vaguely European accent) to fit in with almost everybody else, but still maintain that the correct pronounciation in English is Lie-nux because (1) it rhymes Linus (in English) and (2) it has a long vowel followed by a short vowel to mimic the English pronounciation of Unix.
I wouldn't have posted about this except that there aren't any kids on my lawn to yell at.
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