The Origin of the word Daemon

http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Daemon.html

by Void_ • 15 years ago

215 45 15 years ago

ei.cs.vt.edu

billybob• 15 years ago

I've always wondered about this.

Also: I pronounce "daemon" as "DAY-mun," as opposed to "demon", which I pronounce "DEE-mun." Do the rest of you make this distinction?

troels• 15 years ago

Yes, I do. The only problem then, is how to pronounce Damon, as in Matt.

SamColes• 15 years ago

See, Team America: World Police for clarification.

saddino• 15 years ago

The guy from the Bourne Shell Identity?

trafficlight• 15 years ago

DAY-mun. But you really gotta drag out the AY.

damoncali2• 15 years ago

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.

koenigdavidmj• 15 years ago

It really gets interesting when you work (as a sysadmin in a Unix shop) for a guy with that name.

yardie2• 15 years ago

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.

dkersten• 15 years ago

I do it the opposite.

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...

andrewl• 15 years ago

I've always said "DEE-mun," just as I say Julius SEE-zer, not SAY-zer.

yalue• 15 years ago

I've always said "DIE-mun" just as I say Yulius "KAI-zer"...

ignifero2• 15 years ago

to stay true to their ancient greek origin, you should pronounce them 'deh-mon

sigzero• 15 years ago

I say it exactly like you do.

ltamake• 15 years ago

Yeah, I do that too. I first did it by accident but I liked the distinction between the two words so I just pronounce daemon like that.

Aloisius• 15 years ago

I also pronounce it DAY-mon like GAY-lic.

zephjc• 15 years ago

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)

Edit: interchangeably, DEE-mon or DEE-mun

lakeeffect• 15 years ago

I would pronounce it dea-mon. I think there exists a clouded shift on the vowel pair.

loevborg• 15 years ago

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.

dpapathanasiou• 15 years ago

That reminds me of this story, about the BSD Daemon logo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bsd_daemon.jpg) on a T shirt in Texas: http://rmitz.org/freebsd.daemon.html

ignifero2• 15 years ago

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"

Symmetry2• 15 years ago

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.

smcl2• 15 years ago

Genie is from the arabic "jinn"

ryanklee• 15 years ago

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.

coliveira• 15 years ago

For some time I though that the word deamon was used because it has to fork processes, and in western imagery forks are associated to demons.

cafard2• 15 years ago

daemon goes back well before Socrates; one finds it in Homer, sometimes with a negative implication, sometimes neutrally.

strickjb• 15 years ago

I just noticed my alma mater hosted this article. Let's go Hokies!!

pasbesoin• 15 years ago

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. ;-)

dspillett• 15 years ago

> 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.

eneveu• 15 years ago

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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_%28technothriller_series...

turar• 15 years ago

Sometimes daemons can turn into zombies too. The magical world of Unix. :)

danielsoneg• 15 years ago

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.

Scriptor• 15 years ago

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.

rdtsc• 15 years ago

Even more interesting the outside energy also includes information, as it is needed to figure out which are the slow and the fast molecules.

But in the end it is a bogus idea (even as a thought experiment) since quantum mechanics comes into play in real life.

Osiris2• 15 years ago

Has no one mentioned the absolutely horrid brown on green color scheme? I need to use developer tools to change the page so I can actually read it!

alanthonyc• 15 years ago

That's what readability is for.

https://www.readability.com/

atsaloli• 15 years ago

http://admin.com/samples/Daemons.pdf has the term originating at CTSS at MIT in the early 60's.

The Origin of the word Daemon

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