Apologies for sounding like a metronome, but Sneak has been drawn back to the divisive issue of how to say “www”. Dom Latter wrote to endorse Alistair Birnie’s view that it should be pronounced “wibble”, arguing that this has “only two syllables and is pleasingly descriptive of so much web content”. Rob Gray, meanwhile, points out that in Spanish, the letter W is called uve doble (pronounced, with apologies to all Spaniards, as “oovay-dooblay”). “So ‘www’ is a real 12-syllable mouthful,” notes Gray, “Maybe that’s why the web was slow to catch on in Spain?” He adds that the name InterWeb is catching on, so “maybe IW is the way to go?”
Finally Keith Hurford wrote to say, “Here in Wales, Welsh speakers say it as ‘ooh, ooh, ooh’ - which has the benefit of making even the most mundane domain name sound exciting.” Sneak would add that this last method really ought to be adopted worldwide, particularly as it future-proofs the web for the inevitable day when apes take over the world.

18 Jul 2006