*BSD News Article 82998


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From: cjs@cynic.portal.ca (Curt Sampson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: On the Naming of UNIX Things
Date: 16 Nov 1996 12:23:25 -0800
Organization: Internet Portal Services, Inc.
Lines: 22
Message-ID: <56l7rt$doq@cynic.portal.ca>
References: <55vhpf$q3o@mail1.wg.waii.com> <56jl24$hhg@ordeal.cts.com> <56kli3$395@kirin.wwa.com> <kbibb.848172436@shellx>
NNTP-Posting-Host: cynic.portal.ca
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.misc:26479 comp.unix.bsd.misc:1530 alt.folklore.computers:124711

In article <kbibb.848172436@shellx>, Ken Bibb <kbibb@best.com> wrote:
>In <56kli3$395@kirin.wwa.com> jeverett@wwa.com (John Everett) writes:
>
>>As I've posted here before, DAEMON was pronounced deemon (not daymon) when it 
>>was implemented on the PDP-10; back when UNIX was just a gleam in Ken 
>>Thompson's eye.
>
>But daemon is derived from the greek "daimon" (benevolent spirit).
>Hence the correct (greek) pronounciation has the dipthong.

In which case it's neither /DEEmon/ nor /DAYmon/, but /DIEmon/, in
ancient Greek, or with a short e, /DEHmon/, in modern. (Actually,
the stress on that last one may be backwards; modern Greek has
merged the pronunciations of a lot of the dipthongs and now uses
stress to determine which word the speaker is saying.) Oh, for an
ISO standard character set for IPA....

cjs
-- 
Curt Sampson    cjs@portal.ca		Info at http://www.portal.ca/
Internet Portal Services, Inc.	
Vancouver, BC   (604) 257-9400		De gustibus, aut bene aut nihil.