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by cyphar 2791 days ago
There was a video explaining how to pronounce SUSE several years ago (both funny and a little worrying that such a video was necessary)[1]. It is pronounced strangely since it was a German name and so you have to put on your best German impression to get the "s" sound right.

All jokes aside, I think most folks would agree that SUSE's marketing really needs to be reworked very significantly.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4lFHP-UxTk

3 comments

The German pronunciation would be pretty close to "zooza", so the pronunciation in that video isn't German, and a German accent would hinder you from pronouncing it that way (in German you can't have the /s/ sound at the beginning of a word followed by a vowel). Either way, "sooza" and "zooza" are not exactly hard for English speakers: they're just completely non-inferrable from the "SUSE" spelling.
Yeah, most of my German colleagues say "zooza" -- but saying it this way makes it difficult for English speakers to infer what you're talking about. So I say it as "sooza" even if it's _slightly_ incorrect.
Respectfully, this is something I've never been able to understand about open source projects. Why stick with names that are difficult for most humans, and causes folks to forget your great company still exists? Why not run a small marketing and imaging campaign to sort that out. You already got a great green chameleon logo :-)
It's an acronym, spell each letter in your own language and be confident that it will be correct