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+[[meta copyright="Copyright © 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008 Free Software
+Foundation, Inc."]]
+
+[[meta license="""[[toggle id="license" text="GFDL 1.2+"]][[toggleable
+id="license" text="Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
+document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
+any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant
+Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.  A copy of the license
+is included in the section entitled
+[[GNU_Free_Documentation_License|/fdl]]."]]"""]]
+
+[[meta title="Grammatically speaking, what is the Hurd?"]]
+
+*Hurd*, as an acronym, stands for *Hird of Unix-Replacing Daemons*.  *Hird*, in
+turn, stands for *Hurd of Interfaces Representing Depth*.
+
+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*, *The HURD*, and *the hurd*.
+
+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*.