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I once worked with someone who pronounced SQL files as "squalls". That was the weirdest and most creative pronunciation I've heard.

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In the 80's I worked with a guy who had a theory that most people who grew up with SQL in the early days pronounce it "sequel", and the younger generation was more used to saying it as the letters; S-Q-L.

At $PREVIOUSJOB I worked with a guy from Boston who pronounced "query" as "quarry". But he had a lot of bizarre pronunciations, so we just let it go. And not just because Boston, either.

AFAIR when SQL was introduced there were rumors that IBM decided to use SQL for its name because there was another language called Sequel. So they used an acronym (full name was Structured Query Language).

At one job I had at all agreed that 'Sequel' was dumb and 'Squirrel' would have been better.

I tend to pronounce it “squeal” myself.

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