"My" of MySQL is Monty's daughter.

"He lives in Helsinki with his second wife Anna and daughter Maria (after whom MariaDB was named), and has a daughter My (after whom MySQL was named)[14] and a son Max (giving the name for MaxDB) from his first marriage" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Widenius

Also, I'm pretty sure most of us are mispronouncing MySQL: IIRC, "My" (the Finnish name of his daughter) is pronounced like English "Me".

The y is pronounced like the ü in über.

A tip that works for some: lips to say "oooo" (like an owl, or someone seeing something shiny for the first time), tongue to say "eeee". Well, worth a try.

Actually it's more like the 'j' in Eyjafjallajökull.

Wait, I think you are all just fucking with me...

"MooSQL"

Not the American pronounciation!

The ü in über is pronounced [y]. I wonder if IPA originally got this symbol from Finnish orthography, then.

I think you will find [y] in most Germanic languages, including German, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, (most likely) Icelandic, and Dutch, so probably not. But it is a very "Finnish" vowel though... Hyyvää!

Besides, Widenius is Swedish speaking (just like Linus Thorvalds and about 10% of the people of Finland) and the name "My" was more or less invented by the also Swedish speaking Finnish author Tove Jansson in her books about the Moomins.

Although wikipedia claims it to be a short form of Mary or Maria, which I seriously doubt.

Anyway, Finnish has not that much to do with the name, I think that it allegedly was Tove Janssons uncle - a professor in mathematics, that suggested the name based on the mathematical symbol and Greek letter μ pronounced in Swedish. It might even be vaguely similar to how it was pronounced in ancient Greek :-)

Besides, I think that "My" in Finnish would be spelled "Myy" since just about the only simple thing with the Finnish language is that the vowel length is indicated by the number of characters.

Oh, thanks! I was led astray by people earlier in the thread mentioning Finnish and so I simply assumed Monty's first language was Finnish, which, as you point out, it isn't.

Maybe Monty should upload an .au file somewhere saying "Hello, this is Monty Widenius, and I pronounce MySQL as MySQL"!

I don't speak Finnish. But I did once hear David Axmark pronounce My's name, and to my ear it sounded like "Mih" - an "M" followed by a short vowel similar to the vowel in "bit". In other words, My's name is the same as Mitt Romney's first name, just without the "t" at the end.

You might want IPA [ɪ]. (But another comment in this thread suggested [y], a sound that English doesn't have, and which is close in several ways to English [i] in "me" or [ɪ] in "bit".)

My is a Swedish name, not a Finnish one, as Monty is a Swedish-speaking Finn. It's pronounced similar to "Myeuh", so "Myeuh Ess Kuh Ell".