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Re: Ian Jackson, a question for you.....Re: How does Debian sound?



On Mon, 23 Jun 1997, Dave Cinege wrote:

> On Mon, 23 Jun 1997 10:52:51 -0400 (EDT), Will Lowe wrote:
>
> >	So it's three syllables,  "Deb'-i-an",  with the accent on the "deb".
> 
> This is also how I pronounce it. But the question really is, how does the 
> guy who made it pronouce it? I guess it hinges on how he says his name.
> 
> I'-en
> or
> E'-en
> 
> ?????
> 
> Mr. Jackson?

As others have pointed out, you're thinking of Ian Murdock, not Ian
Jackson, though they both have played crucian roles in the creation of our
distribution.

Last November/December, I had the pleasure of conversing with Ian Murdock
over lunch here at Purdue.  He indulged my silly curiosity (and likely my
mild but poorly-veiled air of hero-worship) for about an hour and a half
while I picked his brain about things Debian, Linux, and GNU-ish.

At any rate, I believe I can say with some certainty that he pronounces his
name "E'-en", with a long E sound and the generic unstressed schwa-vowel
type sound.

Will's description of the pronunciation of Debian is pretty close to Ian's,
except I'm not sure I'd set off the "i".  It's about as bi-syllabic as you
can get without introducing some kind of British "y" kind of thing, e.g.,
"Deb-yun".

If I'd had the foresight, a portable tape recorder, and the ability to
convice him that, "sure, it's just a joke", I would have recorded him
saying it, just Linus did with "Linux".

I didn't get to meet the first half of the name of our distribution, but it
wasn't for trying -- I invited him and his wife over for a big-screen TV
Star Wars marathon that my roomates and I were throwing, but they didn't
make it.  Maybe he was busy with finals and graduation and all that stuff,
or maybe I just came off too psychotic.

You know, people often think I'm crazy but in truth--

KA-CHUNK KA-CHUNK KA-CHUNK

NO CARRIER
-- 
G. Branden Robinson
Purdue University
branden@purdue.edu
http://www.ecn.purdue.edu/~branden/


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