I pronounce it DAY-mun when speaking to other UNIX hackers and DEE-mun when speaking to windows users or regular users. I've never been formerly told how to pronounce it when I started hacking in Redhat. Since most early hackers were smarter than most I assumed there was some sort of word trickery involved (met another guy that pronounced it DAY-EE-mun) that would make me stick out like a newb.
I've known for a long time how it was meant to be pronounced, so when talking to other programmers/hacker types, I say DEE-mun, but when talking to ordinary people I say DAE-mun so they don't say "wtf demons on computers now?" or somesuch - most don't, but some more religious types look at you funny...
Unfortunately, the Classical Latin pronunciation is not used colloquially, so in everyday life, I must stray from what I learned, lest I be viewed as the incorrect one.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/daemon Pronounces it DEE-mon which is how I've always said it. (The Golden Compass audiobooks and movie also pronounce their spirit animals, called Daemons, as DEE-mon).
I always thought the UNIX term came from the meaning of a subordinate/helper spirit (which is what they are, basically - helper services)
As an authority on the subject, I submit that since "Damon" is pronounced Day-mun, that "daemon" must be pronounced Dee-mun, as it's just an alternate spelling of "demon".
But mostly I just want to stop being confused whenever someone says "daemon" around the office, and I think they're talking to me.
Typically in English, an e after a vowel indicates the vowel should make a hard sound rather than soft. So looking at it that way, Daemon should have a hard a (like the name of the letter), thus DAY-mon.
So Unix daemons are descendants of Maxwell's daemon. But we need not forget that Maxwell's demon is part of a long series of philosophical thought experiments, including Laplace's demon and Descartes's malin génie. In Ancient Greek "daimōn" just means God or Deity without the connotation of evil.
It seems to me like the word "genie" in modern English(from the same root I suspect) gets across the idea very well without all the misleading associations.
I decided to actually look it up, and according to an etymology dictionary:
"1650s, "tutelary spirit," from Fr. génie, from L. genius (see genius); used in French translation of "Arabian Nights" to render Arabic jinni, singular of jinn, which it accidentally resembled, and attested in English with this sense from 1748."
On the other hand, my above post absolutely deserved to be downvoted because it is entirely unclear that I meant "The same root as 'malin génie' (evil genius in the 16th century sense of 'genious' as an inspirational spirit) as opposed to demon.
Add to this Socrates's own personal daimon, who, if I am recalling this correctly, would instruct him against taking certain actions but never instructed him to carry any specific actions out. I've always looked at it as one of the earliest examples of reference to conscience in Western writings.
To be fair, James Maxwell is an indirect link to the word demon. I like the word, despite it's evil nature. I imagine daemons as devilish little programs hiding behind your back as you work, and I 've always been a fan of the freebsd demon. Its also infinitely better than "services"
That the term originates with Maxwell's Daemon, which is fundamentally an entropy-reducing agent, is rather apropos - would that all our daemons performed so well.
I'd be interested in the quantum mechanics explanation of how the daemon reduces entropy. When I discussed the thought experiment with some friends we simply concluded that the very act of sorting the molecules is introducing outside energy into the system allowing local entropy to be reduced, just like any other machine. The total entropy of the universe would stay the same and the laws of thermodynamics are still intact.
Funny coincidence. I've just started reading "Daemon", the technotriller by Daniel Suarez.
Great book so far (currently around page 130). I usually only read while commuting (2 hours / day), but this book is so exciting, I found myself reading it at home too.
If you want to take things further, there are arguments that "demon" comes from the area that is now more or less India, and that the negativity associated now associated with the term "in the west" was created as part of the struggle of one religion to dominate over another (likely corresponding to the desire of one polity to dominate over the other(s)... but my memory gets even fuzzier at this point).
Anyway, I, too, pronounce it "daemon". I find this makes a useful distinction; also, I figure why insult the processes from which I'm hoping to receive good things. ;-)
> and that the negativity associated now associated with the term "in the west" was created as part of the struggle of one religion to dominate over another
Many things that the west considers evil in that way comes from other religions (mainly the large number of "nature" religions that get lumped under the banner of "pagan") and is that way from the early days of Christianity as it marched through Europe.
The cloven feet of the devil and other spawn of hell, as commonly depicted, are thought to originally have been a reference to Pan by the Christian artists of the day.
It isn't just evil: even more friendly imaginary come from similar backgrounds: the Easter bunny and hunting eggs at Easter are references back to "Pagan" rituals/gods - as groups converted to Christianity they kept some of their old festivals and such (in a more and more bastardised form as time passed).
Most of what we in the west do at the back end of December has (or had originally) very little to do with Christianity (even ignoring the fair chunk of it came about in the last century or two). There were many "pagan" festivals around that time, mostly of the form of some sort of thanks giving (thanking their Gods or other forces for allowing them to survive past the shortest days of the year, or congratulating themselves for the same), but until 800-and-something AD the Christians didn't mark the birth of Christ at that time. The ceremonies at Easter were (and largely still are) far far more important to them.
Also: I pronounce "daemon" as "DAY-mun," as opposed to "demon", which I pronounce "DEE-mun." Do the rest of you make this distinction?