I know, I know, tomato-tomato, but I’ve had people tell me I say it wrong when said each way, which has left me rather confused, so I decided to do some research and figure out how SQL is actually pronounced. SQL is the language used for querying and managing data in a relational database system. Some people say S-Q-L and some people say “sequel”. This difference in pronunciation also effects the writing of documentation. The indefinite article that’s used before the term (a or an) is based on how it’s pronounced (try saying “a SQL” and “an SQL”). No one wants to sound ignorant, so which way is correct? It turns out they’re both correct/acceptable, but that the S-Q-L way of saying it is more “official”.
SQL was initially developed at IBM by Donald Chamberlin and Raymond Boyce. It was initially called “Structured English Query Language” (SEQUEL) and pronounced “sequel”, though it later had to have it’s name shortened to “Structured Query Language” (SQL) due to trademark issues. It was created to supplant the then popular QUEL database language, and the name “sequel” was meant as a pun (it was the sequel to QUEL) [1]. However, this leads to the big question – was language still called “sequel” after the name change?
If you look at Oracle’s official documentation on SQL, it says it’s still pronounced “sequel” [2]. However, if you look at MySQL’s official documentation, it says “MySQL” is officially pronounced “‘My Ess Que Ell’ (not ‘my sequel’)” [3], and Wikipedia says SQL is officially pronounced “S-Q-L” and references an O’Reilly book on the subject [4]. So this is no help, the major sources aren’t agreeing on the way it’s “officially” pronounced.
Then a thought occurred to me: SQL was created in the 70′s, the creators are probably techies, I can probably just email them and ask them how it’s pronounced! Ray Boyce had passed away at a young age, but Don Chamberlin was alive and now teaching at a university. I felt a little silly, but I decided to fire off a short email to him:
Hello Don,
I’m sorry to waste your time with such a silly question, but I’ve often heard SQL pronounced S-Q-L or as Sequel. I’ve also seen the official pronunciation listed both ways. According to wikipedia, you and Raymond Boyce created the language and it was shortened to SQL after some legal dispute. So my question is, is there an official pronunciation to SQL? Thank you for your time.
- Pat
To my delight, he replied back:
Hi Pat,
Since the language was originally named SEQUEL, many people continued to pronounce the name that way after it was shortened to SQL. Both pronunciations are widely used and recognized. As to which is more “official”, I guess the authority would be the ISO Standard, which is spelled (and presumably pronounced) S-Q-L.
Thanks for your interest,
Don Chamberlin
I felt a little dumb wasting his time with such a goofy question, but I was thrilled he replied back. Later I would find out that he himself pronounces it as “sequel” [5], so it’s interesting he would be so unbiased, though I suppose his pronunciation is consistent with him noting that the original guys kept calling it “sequel”. With this I felt I had found my answer: Both were acceptable, though the standard indicated S-Q-L was probably more official.
I don’t have any plans to be that guy and start correcting people who say “sequel”, though now I feel I can at least defend saying S-Q-L if someone tries to correct me. Additionally, while this may seem like a really trivial matter, some people seem to take it rather seriously. On a thread at Oracle’s message forum, a DBA who pronounces it “sequel” mentioned that “I’ve rejected interviewees because they didn’t know how to pronounce SQL … If you can’t pronounce it correctly, then I have doubts as to your ability to use it correctly.” [6] Though then again, the Oracle community seems to have adopted the “sequel” way of saying it, so maybe adapting to whatever environment you’re in is the best policy. Whatever the case, knowing why it’s said one way or another can useful.
[1] http://www.ibphoenix.com/resources/documents/design/doc_123
[2] http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B10501_01/server.920/a96540/intro.htm
[3] http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E17952_01/refman-5.1-en/what-is-mysql.html
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sql
[5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghxpXpTuALM#t=33m23s
[6] https://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=630585&start=15&tstart=0
I pronounce “SQL” when related to MySQL or other open source projects as S-Q-L, however when it comes to Oracle, MSSQL, or Sybase, I say “sequel” — that goes for both the software and the languages themselves. I don’t even think about it anymore, it’s just automatic.
That’s probably the best way to go. Right now I find myself saying S-Q-L most of the time, but will switch to saying “sequel” when I’m talking to the DB admins at my work (who are mostly oracle guys).
I initially always said SQL because I essentially always work with MySQL and that’s the culture. However when I first started getting involved with people in the Microsoft Windows Server world, there was a condescending attitude I received from some (but not most) that if you say “S-Q-L” then you clearly don’t know anything about databases at all. I actually had two different people tell me this point blank, and instead of being a culture warrior, I just change for the culture now, depending on to whom I’m speaking and what about.
i always used S-Q-L but here in Italy we are anyway a bit “elastic” with english
but i found really dumb that they consider you expert or not only from how you pronouce SQL
I say T-S-Q-L or M-S-S-Q-L or My-S-Q-L, but “sequel”-Server or “sequel” language for these reasons:
a) when I said S-Q-L (in 1993) I was corrected that this was “wrong”. Also the “official” Microsoft documentation said so. (I’m Microsoft biased.)
b) aggregated names are something else (especially product names), so I use the “written” version (S-Q-L) for these cases. “My-sequel” sounds really wrong to me.
Nice article!
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Thanks much for this article!!!
Great post, Pat!
As the author of “SQL in a Nutshell”, also an O’Reilly book, I’d talked to a number of people at the various vendors involved with their SQL implementations. At the time of the 2nd edition of the book, I’d covered the ANSI standard implementation, plus Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2 UDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Sybase.
In early discussions, I saw little consistency. One thing I began to see over time, though, was that most everyone talking about the language itself was that they said “S-Q-L”. Talking about a product or a vendor dialect, it was “sequel” as in “PL – sequel” (PL/SQL), “Transact – sequel” (T-SQL), and “sequel server” (Microsoft SQL Server and Sybase SQL Server).
Still, inconsistency rules the day!
-Kev
hey Kevin,
Thanks for dropping in! I’ve actually seen your SQL in a Nutshell book at work so it’s really cool to have you comment on my blog
. MS has also adopted the sequel pronunciation, so that may be why so many vendors also use sequel. But yeah, inconsistency definitely rules the day.
Very nice article and thank you for the research. I’ve heard it both ways of course, and I can’t really say which way more often. But at my age (58), I don’t think I could change from pronouncing it sequel, the way the guy who taught me the language said it.
Google query for “a sql”: 8,480,000 results
Google query for “an sql”: 3,640,000 results
From these estimates, roughly 70% of people pronounce it as “sequel” and not s-q-l.
Pronouncing it as sequel only takes two syllables.
Pronouncing it as s-q-l takes three.
The creator of the language himself even pronounces it as sequel.
The Creator of the language is quoted above.
Using Google for something like this is very, very flawed. The first result I get for the quoted phrase “a sql” is the wikipeida page, and the string “a sql” is no where to be found on that page or in the cached version that Google used to crawl it. Similarly, in the top 20 results I also get a page titled “SQL: COUNT Function”, which doesn’t contain the string “a sql”. So Google is trying to be smart somehow and is factoring in pages even if they don’t contain “a sql”. In addition, the results from that metric could be pulling in multiple pages from domains/subdomains that have a bias one way or the other (microsoft.com has over 500k pages indexed with “a sql”). Whatever the case, that metric does not describe what you think it does.
Additionally, that argument ignores the fact that MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite all have official pronunciations of S-Q-L and that Microsoft and Oracle products have adopted pronunciations of “sequel”.
Whether you pronounce it sequel or S-Q-L, you’re in good company, but trying to narrow the decision down to a google search is flawed and ignores too many important factors.
Thanks for the article, cleared so much up for me without having to formulate silly questions myself
Honestly, I always thought it is S-Q-L and thought it was silly that my dbms-professor pronounced it sequel (or more like: “si-kl” with an i like in pity or knitting).
I put it off as some weird German-guy-speaking-English thing (I live in Germany) until I checked again today.
The more you know
Some years and several jobs ago I sat in on a meeting for a new product launch where most of the attendees were sales or admin. The buzz was that this was our new flagship super fast product that used ‘Sequel’. As we were mainly an Oracle shop and I was unfamiliar with this new product I tentatively enquired if it in fact used SQL Server. I was met with blank faces but eventually someone told me that yes, this would have SQL Server as a back end.
Since then I have found many people in other companies using ‘sequel’ as an abbreviation for SQL Server, so to avoid any confusion I tend to use ‘SQL’ for the language unless I am in a conversation whith someone who is using ‘sequel’ and knows what they are talking about.
Incidentally, when I did my original Oracle course (over 10 ears ago now) I do remember the instructor saying that some people pronounced SQL as sequel but he did not because you would have to pronounce all the other words that contained ‘SQL’ in them in a similar way (SQLCA, SQLERRM, SQLERRD etc.), which could lead to a lot of confusion.
I’ve been in IT before “IT” was even a word, but am new to SQL & studying to break into the field. I landed here to learn the correct pronunciation of SQL, MySQL, SQL Server, etc. If I get an interview, I think I will wait until they say it first. Rejecting an interviewee for pronouncing it differently than the interviewer thinks it should be pronounced and therefore doubting the interviewee’s ability to use SQL is illogical (& other things). That would be a fortunate rejection though, because I really wouldn’t want to work for someone like that. Been there. Done that. I remember the brouhaha over whether to spell it “data base” or “database”. That was a new word back then. Maybe in 30 more years this SQL pronunciation dilemma will end peaceably.
I made the Oracle Assocciate certification, worked in a highly “Oracle-Influenced” company for over 3 Years and made some high-level SQL and PL/SQL courses. NONE of the experts around me during that time ever pronounced it “Sequel”. Neither the Teachers nor the DB-Admins or other Oracle-People around me.
I know, there are people saying “Sequel” but I always thought, this is missleading since it is S-Q-L (essquell) and not C-Q-L (seequell).
So you mean its not pronounced like that furry park animal, the squirrel? or MySquirrel? Cause that’d be my dialect…..
I was saying SQL, until I heard Bill Gates pronounced (“Microsoft sequel”) about MS RDBM, and I had to think about what he was referring to. Now I say “sequel”, because I like acronyms that have nice pronounciations (qt, icq, json, etc.)
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