Quote:
I once knew a guy that pronounced it "squirrel".

There was a RiscOS database package actually called Squirrel. IIRC this wasn't because it supported SQL, but to draw your attention from the fact that it didn't.

For the record: F-A-Q, S-Q-L and U-R-L, but "dot-exy". Tech linguistics is interesting because so many people are self-taught from purely written resources such as the internet, and so they make up the pronunciations themselves. Most of Empeg pronounce Linux with the short "i" of "fin", and I sometimes slip into that, but I always used to use the long "i" of "fine". And yes, I've heard the WAV (that's "wav" with a short "a", not W-A-V) of Mr Torvalds using the "ee" sound of "fine herbes".

Peter