Linear Algebra Pronunciation Guide

Like all fields of mathematics, linear algebra has many prominent figures whose names are non-trivial to pronounce in English (the lingua franca of science and mathematics).

This is further complicated by numerical linear algebra libraries which have inconsistent and unintuitive pronunciations.

Cholesky

• pronounced: ko - less - key (somewhat throaty ko), or shuh - less - key
• often mispronounced: chuh - less - key
• notes: the first pronunciation is Polish and the second is French, deciding on the correct pronunciation is somewhat muddled by that fact that Cholesky was paternally Polish and maternally French, and grew up in France, Joel Tropp (in an unrecorded presentation I attended) made a convincing argument for the second (French) pronunciation, saying that “Cholesky’s family had lived in France for multiple generations, and he probably pronounced his own name this way”

Schur

• pronounced: shore
• often mispronounced: sherr (rhymes with her)

Krylov

• pronounced: cree - lav, cree - luvf
• often mispronounced: cry - lawv

BLAS

• pronounced: blawz (rhymes with paws), bloss (rhymes with gloss, perhaps slightly less common)
• often mispronounced: blass (rhymes with class)

LAPACK

• pronounced: L - A - pack (syllabic rhyme with bell - may - pack)
• often mispronounced: luh - pack

SCALAPACK

• pronounced: skay - luh - pack (syllabic rhyme with may - uh - pack)
• often mispronounced: anything else

PETSC

• pronounced: pet - see
• often mispronounced: anything else

References: Cholesky, BLAS and LAPACK, PETSc