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Comment by bdcravens | Hacker News Reader

> The system was initially called Freax

Maybe it's common knowledge, but first time I've heard that. I wonder how that would have impacted adoption if it had stuck?

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Hard to say. "Unix" is pronounced like "eunuchs" and yet saw pretty wide adoption.

Definitely in a different time and under other circumstances than Linux though.

Yoo-nicks rather than yoo-nucks surely?

They're both pronounced "Yoo-nicks"

They really are not, you know.

Unix: /ˈjuːnɪks/

Eunuch: /ˈjuː.nək/

Presumably the plural form retains the vowel, hence they are just a bit different.

Some accents don't distinguish those two vowels in unstressed positions.

Like the Kiwi accent?! Didn't think of that!

Thanks.

There's an anecdote that they answered the phone in the UNIX room with "eunuchs room" in a high pitched voice.

Then instead of the linnux and lynux pronunciation confusion we'd have freaks and free-ax.

Perhaps it was meant to be pronounced like Free Ox, since an ox looks a bit like a gnu (wildebeest)

Quite unlikely:

> The first releases of Linux used a license that forbade commercial use. Some of the early contributors suggested a change to a free-software license. In the fall of 1991, Richard Stallman visited Finland and I took Linus to a talk given by Stallman. This, the pressure from contributors, and my nagging eventually convinced Linus to choose the GNU GPL license instead, in early 1992.

This audio is burned in my memory since I was configuring my SoundBlaster in Red Hat 5.2: https://youtu.be/c39QPDTDdXU

This just made me realize that even though I pronounce Linux as "Lee-nux" (the same way he does), I always read his name as "Lie-nus" (like the Charlie brown character).

His name is pronounced "Lee-nus" in Finnish so I guess it makes sense.

There is a quote somewhere that says Linus names his programs after himself. Freax for freak, and then later git too. Git means an unpleasant person.

people often use 'git' for people they think are unpleasant, but that is in order to insult them — 'git' means 'stupid person', not 'unpleasant person'

> 'git' means 'stupid person', not 'unpleasant person'

Native English speaker (UK) and I've never heard 'git' used to mean 'stupid person'. I've only ever heard it used to mean 'unpleasant person', generally in the form of "complete git" or "utter git".

(Of course, language use can be different in different countries.)

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