The GIF Pronunciation Page (2024)

The GIF graphics file format was invented by Steve Wilhite at CompuServe in 1987. In the years since, a debate has been raging as to the correct way to pronounce "GIF":like "jif" as in the peanut butter, or with a hard 'g' as in "gift" as a majority of Mac users seem to prefer. With this page I intend to clear this up once and for all...

It's pronounced like "jif". Period. The end. That's final. End of story.

If you have a comment, send me an E-mail at:

If it's interesting or funny, I'll reprint it on this page. If you still insist onpronouncing it like "gift" and don't feel like E-mailing me a reason... well then, you can jo gump in a lake, you gerk!

Phillip Burgess writes:

Ahhh, good, someone with their head screwed on right.

Anyone who pronounces "GIF" with a hard G simply does not understandcomputer programmers (and any programmers who still insist on this sillypronunciation are simply unfit). No *decent* coder would pass up anopportunity to inflict a horrid pun on the world. And seeing as peanutbutter is one of the principle three programmer foods (the other two beingPepsi and nacho cheese Doritos), the reference is immediately obvious.

The "acronym theory," that a hard G should be used because it's "Graphics"and not "Jraphics," simply does not hold water. If acronyms were always tobe pronounced from their source words rather than as an independent newword, then by this very arrangement, "JPEG" would be pronounced "JFEG."

Just to give these people a taste of their own medicine... I've startedpronouncing "JPEG" with a hard G.

Brenda Harrison writes:

The "Correct Pronunciation of 'GIF'" page made me laugh for a good 5 minutes. It reminds me of the age olddebate of "How to pronounce 'Geocities.'" That argument ended up with someone actually calling the Geocitiesoffices to see how the phone operators answered the phone. ("Hello, Geo Cities," not "Hello, Geocities[g-os-ities]," just so you know. You probably already do, anyways.)

Sam Mefford writes:

Thanks for your page on the pronunciation of 'gif'! I'm glad to havebeen vindicated by evidence!

Just thought I'd point out that in theenglish language, when a g is followed by an a, o, or u, it is supposedto be hard. When followed by an i or e, it is supposed to be soft.Therefore I never had any question that it was pronounced 'jif', despitethe fact that everyone around disagreed.

Rita Minnichsoffer rebuts:

I'd like to know what happens when you give a gekko to geese, or get a gift from a girl, then...

Talbott Crowell (who apparently has a dictionary and lots of free time) also rebuts:

I did not know the English language had such rules, from now on I willpronounce the following words with a soft "J" instead of a hard "G"

Jilligans Island
Jibbon Viper
birtday jift
feeling jiddy
jiggle (laugh)
Jilbert (cartoon)
fish jills
the Jideon Bible
you are jilty of the crime
a woman's jirdle
jirl scout cookies
jive me some
jibblets and ji*zzards

Pronounce GIF as you may.

Clay McGovern writes:

Although an interesting diversion, the roots of a word and its originalpronunciation are completely irrelevant to common usage. Words havelives of their own. The creators of a word have little control overpronunciation beyond their original act of creation. Words are meantonly for communication. The salient question is on "Do you understand mymeaning when I say 'GIF'?" If the answer is "Yes." Then the dispute over"proper" pronunciation is absolutely absurd. Very, very, few peoplepronounce GIF with a soft g. Those who do are understood as well asthose who don't. Where is the problem with that...

Best regards,

Clay (with a "c" as in "cat")

Erik J. Macki writes:

...

English words beginning in "gi-" "ge-" or "gy-" that are not of Romance origin (French, Italian, etc.) are *all* pronounced with a velar (hard) "g." It isprobably due to a misunderstanding of this principle that led the inventor of the GIF to pronounce it with an affricate (soft) "g" in the first place. Thisis why a native speaker of English would intuitively pronounce a word spelled "GIF" with a velar (hard) "g" without knowing otherwise. This is moreconsistent with all English-speakers' natural, internal morphophonology, and that is why the velar pronunciation is so widespread.

Nonetheless, spelling is often irrelevant to pronunciation in English: with words like "tough," through," "gift," "gypsy," "egg," "gem," and "massage," noone need waste any effort creating logic about how the letter "g" "ought" to be pronounced in English words: there simply is no logic. One must go byusage.

English is full of words whose pronunciation deviates from prescribed standards--precisely because usage, and not prescriptive rules, dictates what is"correct." No amount of arguing from pundits and word-coiners can ever change this!

I suspect from informally surveys that the velar pronunciation in "GIF" is actually more common than the affricate ("soft") pronunciation--a point of viewvalidated by the very existance of your Web site--and as such the velar variant is at least a "correct" alternative if not the more common and thus "morecorrect" form entirely.

Thanks,
Erik

(Ed: Whoa, that's over my head dude... you lost me at "morphophonology"!)

Dean Hutchings writes:

For years I have been telling people the correct pronunciation of GIF image files. They ALWAYS claimed I was wrong. I thought I had read somewhere that the creator of theformat pronounced it like "jif" but could never find the proof. Now I have the ammo I need to finally prove my point!

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!

Nathan Gaines writes:

I must say that your page on the correct pronunciation of .GIF is the most complete, well-researched, and convincing document I have ever seen on the subject.

Now could someone please tell me which of the three pronunciations of LINUX is correct?

Take care,
Nathan Gaines

Rob Ford writes:

"Jiff"...."Giff"....they're both wrong. The "G" in "GIF" is silent. And silence is Jolden.

So sayeth me.

(Rob was also nice enough to provide the nifty animated GIF logo up top. Thanks, Rob!)

Cole Hewitt writes:

Maybe GIF should be pronounced "zhif" with a French accent. Then we could end this controversy.

Steve Bennett writes:

I saw your site on the proper pronunciation of GIF and have to categorically state it's pronounced with the soft G as in Jif. Back in 1987, I was an assitant Sysop onCompuserve, in the Comics and Animation forum, and also in the AmigaArts forum, and as such was given the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of GIF development. (GIFwas a godsend, especially for the Comics forum which was dealing with umpteen jillion different incompatible graphics formats...)

Days after the format was announced and the first programs released by Compuserve, I was one of the first to post new GIF code, and wrote an Amiga program to display GIFimages. (I actually don't recall if mine was the first 3rd party program uploaded -- if not, it was by a matter of a few days at most...)

I called that program GIFFY because I had completely rewritten the decoder code (still in use by a few programs out there...:) and made it MUCH faster. (Later, I wroteGIFFY2, and HAMGIF...) We all pronounced it "Jif" at the time, and the name "GIFFY" seemed the obvious and clear choice of name.

It never even occurred to me that someone might pronounce it with the hard G until the mid 1990s.

Seeing your site was a breath of nostalgia for me -- I wonder if there's an archive of those old Compuserve forums anywhere around. So much great stuff was there. Alas,I suspect it's all lost in the maelstrom...

JaguaR2D2 writes:

I thought this might make a good link on the GIF Pronunciation Page:
http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail51.html

It is a cartoon in which, at one point, the character Strong Bad says:

"Okay, next on the checklist: lots of animated GIFs! {pronounces it /gifs/; stops typing} or... GIFs... {pronounces it /jifs/} or however you say it. I don't know. I hearda couple of nerds arguing about it one time."

Nick writes:

A belated bit of opinion for the discussion about the pronunciation ofGIF—it is well-established that it was intended by the creators forGIF to be pronounced with a "J" sound, similar to the peanut butterbrand, and technically this pronunciation is correct.

However, savvy graphics people who know their history (dare I say I'mone?) are also quite familiar with the JPEG Interchange Format (JIF),which is pronounced in the same manner. Since the Joint PhotographicExperts Group was organized in 1986, their development of the JPEGfamily of standards (including JIF) possibly began earlier than theCompuServe work, which is consistently cited as resulting in thecreation of GIF in 1987. Conversely, it can be argued that the JointPhotographic Experts Group didn't release their first standard until1992, well after GIF's rise in popularity.

But the timeline is not so important. Those of us who followed andbecame familiar with both standards ran into the pronunciation issuelong years ago. And the answer was simple—adhere to typical Englishrules, as cited rather well by Erik J. Macki, and pronounce GIF with ahard G and pronounce JIF with a J. That rule made it simple toidentify between the formats, even if it meant one was pronouncedinconsistently with what its creators intended.

Such "bastardization of language" is unavoidable. People stillpronounce Porsche as a single syllable, despite there being no silentE in German. Furniture stores advertise "chase lounges" instead ofthe correct French chaises longues. While I generally agree with Mr.Macki that "one must go with usage," this is a different case. It'snot from laziness or poor understanding of etymology that I pronounceGIF with a hard G, nor because it follows what other people do. It'sin respect to the knowledge that there are two graphic formats withidentical-sounding names, and the easiest, most efficient way todistinguish them is to pronounce them differently.

For my two cents, it was silly of the creators of GIF to go against anobvious pronunciation and ignore the words that formed that acronym.That was just asking for the very trouble that has kept this argumentalive for so long.

Pigumon writes:

Doesn't matter what the "Creators" say.

You can't make up the word "banana" and tell everyone it's pronounced "ping pong table".

Gif(t).

Not like it matters, Spam is a stupid word for junk mail since tons of people LOVE SPAM but hate junk mail.

Computer geeks are stupid. They named the "PDA" when they had the chance to call it a "PAD".

Steve writes:

Yes, I realize this is such old hat that it now smells like... an old hat.

But, because I was basically flung to your .gif controversy site, here's my two bucks. (which of course, used to be 2 cents)

My first objection is minor but meaningful to me. You see the picture you have on your site of Bob Berry? Well, I don't have a picture of Steve Wilhite as a second confirmation, but I'll tell you right now, no one that looks like Bob Berry is going to have any effect on how I pronounce a damned thing.

Having said that, perhaps you will consider this: I don't accept your position that anyone has the right to define pronunciation of anything at all, whether they made it up or not. That includes, and perhaps needs to be emphasized in the case of acronyms, in light of their becoming a de facto modern day source of new words and language. Because of this fact, and attempting to stop adding stupid pronunciations to the already too confusing and contradictory English language, I will debate you on that subject any day, in front of any audience, and win overwhelming support. In other words, just because you assume, or because you SAY a thing, doesn't make it so.

I could, for instance attempt to apply your "rights" logic to a myriad of other circ*mstances and be shot down without an argument. For example, if I purchase a huge tract of worthless land, drain all the swamps, clean up the old garbage dumps, build beautiful lamp-lined streets and gorgeous houses, I might think I have a right to number my streets and houses how I want. Perhaps call north south and south east. But I don't. You see, there are laws, (in this case laws for guiding people trying to find their way, which is something the jif's should spend a little time thinking about) just as there are laws of pronunciation. Again, arbitrarily deciding to pronounce something with a natural "j" sound, that STANDS FOR something with a natural "g" sound WILL NOT make it so. Not unless you can defend the pronunciation of graphics as jraphics.

Finally, I refuse to follow some illogical course, (especially one based upon peanut butter of all things) that stupidly flies in the face of the primary logic, which in this case would be the long name of the acronym: Grrrraphic etc. etc. This principle of mine can be found vindicated in the very town where I live. No one knows who first called this area, Buena Vista. I assume it was a Hispanic, although it might not have been. In any case, the rural, native population insists on pronouncing this name as, Byoona Vista. Guess what? Even though some of these people have FOUNDING ancestors whose opinions predate any authority I might try to enforce by over 100 years, I AM NOT, EVER, going to call this place BYOOna. To those who insist, (and there are many) and to you and your followers I say, Kiss My pet Jackass.

Steve

Kim Williamson writes:

...as long as you insist on everyone saying you're "heels over head" in love with someone. Which is what is originally was...as you'd put it, "Period. The end. That's final. End of story."

Language evolves. Pronunciation is part of language. Pronunciation evolves.

Kim

Justin Garbett writes:

Thanks for the great info page on GIF pronunciation, I butt heads with this issue ALL the time.

I run ReactionGIFs and have to say GIF constantly. I always say it with the soft G (Jiff)... and every dang time, the person I am talking to will correct me with the hard G: "You mean GIF? It happens every time. Then I tell them the 'choosy developers' story and they just stare back blankly at me like I am a crazy person. Then they continue to use the hard G and think I have some form of nerd OCD. I hate to say it, but the hard G people are winning the war. It's an uphill battle for us soft Gs. I will continue to fight the good fight as I just prefer the soft G. I might have to stop trying to defend it though, people really don't like to be corrected.

All the best,
Justin

John Bridges writes:

I was one of the original GIF developers, wrote the image viewer PICEM which was first released in 1987.

I have always pronounced it GIF like the word GIFT.

Sadly, I don't have an archive of the developers forum on Compuserve from 1987, but there was at least one discussion on the pronunciation, and I was on the GIF side.

My argument then, like many of the modern arguments was that it's Graphics Image Format, not Jraphics Image Format, and that the closest word is GIFT.

Matt Drury writes:

I have a note on my calendar every May 28th to celebrate GIF, and some quick google-fu found your page.

I helped run the Picture Support Forum on CompuServe, which expanded to the many Graphics Forums, from the late Eighties through the early 2000s. Dining in the Oak Room with Steve and others, the soft-G "gif" was always used in-house. I don't remember people being as polarized about it then - Mac vs PC was more of a thing - but it was pre-Internet, after all.

It amuses me to no end that, 33 years on, it's still being argued about. And that's just fine - how many other fancy file formats are in widespread use a third of a century later? :)

Thanks for keeping the faith!

Jif peanut butter has weighed in on the debate with their #JIFvsGIF campaign. The highlight is this video:

This site has been (somewhat) maintained by Steve Olsen since 1998 whenI thought of compiling the facts surrounding the GIF vs. JIF pronounciation debate which I had followed since thegraphic format's inception in the late 80's when I was an avid BBS user.Thanks to Andy L. at Skizzers.orgwho hosted this site for a while before I got my OlsenHome.com domain in 2002. Since then I've continued to get the occasional e-mail from people with an opinionor direct connection to the subject,and I usually post it in the Reader's Comments section. If you've got a view on this topic, feel free to e-mail me at: