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[[!meta title="Grammatically speaking..."]]

> [[It's_time_to_explain|origin_of_the_name]] the meaning of *Hurd*.
> 
> *Hurd* stands for *Hird of [[Unix]]-Replacing Daemons*.
> And, then, *Hird* stands for *Hurd of Interfaces Representing Depth*.

The Hurd has its share of linguistic debate.  The subject of proper usage comes
up quite often.

Although [[Thomas_Bushnell_states|origin_of_the_name]] that the word *Hurd* is
an acronym; we do not treat it as such, but rather as a concrete noun.  We
treat *Hurd* as a title rather than as a proper name: it requires an article,
as in *the Hurd*.  For instance: *The ext2 filesystem is provided by the Hurd,
not by Mach.* Note that all of the following are incorrect: *Hurd*, *HURD*,
*H.U.R.D.*, *The HURD*, and *the hurd*.

Since the Hurd is part of the GNU Project, we also refer to it as *GNU Hurd*
which is treated as a proper noun.  We write *the GNU Hurd* instead of *the
Hurd* when we want to emphasize that the Hurd is a GNU package.  Once this has
been made clear, we usually use the shorter form, without *GNU*.

The whole operating system includes not only the kernel and the system servers,
but also many more programs.  This system is called *GNU*, or *the GNU
operating system*.  The GNU programs can also run on other operating system
kernels.  We say *GNU/Hurd* when we want to put emphasis on the fact that this
is the GNU system running on top of the Hurd, and to contrast it with the
GNU/Linux system which is GNU using Linux as the kernel.

Finally, there is *Debian GNU/Hurd*. This refers to the distribution of the GNU
system as created by the Debian developers.  For example: *What do you run on
your laptop?  Debian GNU/Hurd, of course.*

The French generally write *le Hurd*--that is, they treat the name as masculine
singular, capitalized as in English.

When we are referring to the microkernel, we say *Mach* and use it as a proper
noun.  For example: *Mach uses the device drivers found in version 2.0.x of
Linux.*  We sometimes say *the Mach microkernel* instead of just *Mach*.


To pronounce the word *Hurd*, you should say the English word *herd*.  This is
pronounced as *hɚd* using the International Phonetic Alphabet.