
Is SQL pronounced "s-q-l" or "sequel"? - kevinguy
Is SQL pronounced &quot;s-q-l&quot; or &quot;sequel&quot;?
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Bo0m
I hear them both on a daily basis, neither are wrong. A classic article about
this: [http://patorjk.com/blog/2012/01/26/pronouncing-sql-s-q-l-
or-...](http://patorjk.com/blog/2012/01/26/pronouncing-sql-s-q-l-or-sequel/)

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mrcold
SQL is an initialism for _Structured Query Language_. So the correct
pronunciation is "s-q-l". Acronyms have a natural flow and can be read as is
(NASA, LASER etc.). Initialisms do not and must be read one letter at a time.

Grammar. It's magic.

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rprospero
If I follow your logic properly, then, when reading the sentence

"The disk with all the PNG files was read too frequently for the IDE
controller, so we switched to a SCSI drive"

you would pronounce "PNG" as "Pea En Gee", "IDE" as "Eyed", and "SCSI" as "Ess
See Ess Eye"? I would have pronounced "PNG" as "Ping", "IDE" as "Eye Dee Ee",
and "SCSI" as "Scuzzy". I wonder if our differences are regional?

For the record, I pronounce "SQL" the same was that you do.

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jordsmi
Is saying "Ping" actually a thing? I've only ever heard "P-N-G"

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rprospero
For what it's worth, the W3 pronounced it "ping", but this might just be a
holdover from the 90s. I've honestly heard both.

[http://www.w3.org/TR/PNG-Introduction.html](http://www.w3.org/TR/PNG-
Introduction.html)

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hobs
Both, I often find that microsofties say sequel and open source guys say
s-q-l, but that is just a personal observation.

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MattBearman
I've noticed that as well

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Morieris
Back before I ever spoke to anyone about databases, I pronounced it to myself
as "squirrel". Good times.

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grandalf
S Q L ...

Sequel is incorrect, but it often overtakes within a company if a few people
don't realize this and start referring to it.

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Stratoscope
When I worked at Gupta Technologies back in the '80s and we wrote SQLBase and
SQLWindows, we all pronounced it "sequel".

These were people who came from Oracle and such places, so I naturally assumed
that this pronunciation was correct.

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MalcolmDiggs
Who has time for 3 syllables? "Sequel"!!

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Jeremy1026
"Se-quel" is 2 syllables.

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itsybitsycoder
And S-Q-L is 3, so "Se-quel" saves time. :)

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rufusjones
Neither-- it's pronounced "Gif".

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cafard
Like the present or like the peanut butter?

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jharger
Peanut butter makes a great present!

(Unless the recipient is allergic)

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vile
'Sequel', because even though it's grammatically incorrect, it rolls off the
tongue much better.

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brightsize
"Sequel". But I also used to pronounce LED (light-emitting diode) as "lead"
until I heard an optical engineer (with PhD) say "l-e-d" and felt stupid.
"Ping"(PNG) still sounds weird to me but scuzzy(SCSI) and as-key(ASCII) don't.
It's a mystery.

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jeremyevans
"s-q-l". It is ambiguous if pronounced "sequel". :)

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cafard
Standalone, "s-q-l". In compounds--SQL Server, SQLDeveloper, PL/SQL, MySQL--
usually "sequel". But again "s-q-l" in PostgreSQL and T-SQL.

Do I feel strongly about it? No.

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wglb
Yes, and I don't mean to be snarky. I hear it each way.

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ctb_mg
When I worked with a lot of MySQL users, they tended to say "s-q-l". These
days I'm in SQL server and they say "sequel".

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joeclark77
Both are acceptable.

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joshuapants
Hmmm, I've always said "sequel" but that's just because I heard someone else
say it that way when I first heard of it.

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krapp
I pronounce it "squirrel" just to troll people.

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bbcbasic
Pronounce it as a vowel-less word i.e.: "skwll"

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daggerhashimoto
i use both, randomly. It should be used for a pRNG.

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seanmcdirmid
Inside Microsoft: sequel, outside Microsoft: s-q-l

