Hacker News Reader

Comment by jameshart | Hacker News Reader

There seems to be a common misunderstanding here.

'Daemon' is just an alternate spelling of 'demon'. It's pronounced the same, means the same thing, and is simply the same word. Just as 'encyclopaedia' and 'encyclopedia' are the same word, or 'mediaeval' and 'medieval' are the same word.

View on HN

I like to pronounce it daymon if only to avoid inferences made by the uninitiated. De(e)mon does have the devilish scent.

Good story:

"Are you a Satanist?"

http://rmitz.org/freebsd.daemon.html

Yes and no - they have the origin in the same word, but as the article point out the two spellings have acquired different connotations. So they are not exactly the same word anymore.

And since they are no longer the same word, the distinction is aided by difference in pronunciation.

I went looking for the Greek pronunciation of daemon/daimon, and this is what I found:

MP3: http://media.studylight.org/lex/grk/1142g.mp3

Source: http://classic.studylight.org/lex/grk/view.cgi?number=1142

The pronunciation of Kubernetes is also interesting.

MP3: http://media.studylight.org/lex/grk/2942g.mp3

Source: http://classic.studylight.org/lex/grk/view.cgi?number=2942

Some pronounce daemon as "day-mon" ie with a long a, whereas I have always heard demon pronounced as "dee-mon".

The second syllable is also different and I don't know the formal notation. day-mn and deemun is the best I can do, where "-" indicates a longer transition from the y to mn (the m flows into the n).

To be pedantic, ae is a diphthong in Latin that sounds more like the ‘i’ in ‘fine’. It was definitely never pronounced with a long e in Latin. Even ‘demon’ in Latin would have been pronounced with a long a sound.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com