In French, and more specifically French as spoken in some areas in Switzerland, there is a very natural way of pronouncing hex numbers:

1 to F are the normal 'un' to 'quinze'. A is 'dix'.

10 is 'seize'. 11 is 'seize et un' etc. Until 1F which is `seize et quinze'.

20 to 2F are 'vingt' until 'vingt et quinze'.

Etc.

70, 80 and 90 are called 'septante', 'huitante' (Swiss-specific) and 'nonante'.

A0 is 'dixante', then we have 'onzante', 'douzante', 'treizante', 'quatorzante' and 'quinzante'.

100 is 'cent', and from there normal rules apply.

Etc.

So B78D would be 'onze mille sept cents huitante treize'.

Note that 'soixante dix' is 6A, not 70.

Much less interesting but I've worked in teams where "zillion" is a shorthand for "followed by all the zeroes that fit in a word of the size we're talking about". So 8 zillion is 0x80000000 if we're talking about a 32 bit address space.

The extra digit names flow well, but I think shoehorning it into the same constructions English decimal numbers use doesn't, mostly because the “-ty”/“-teen” suffixes are too tied both etymologically and phonetically to being “ten”. If I say the word “eighteen”, making it 0x18 in one context and XVIII in another is close in plausible applicability and far in exact meaning, which is about the worst case for avoiding misunderstandings. In fact I have a vague recollection of my computer architecture instructor back in undergrad warning us about exactly that regarding hexadecimal numbers: do not ever be tempted to pronounce them as though they were decimal, even if all the digits fit into the pattern.

There might be ways to fix that with variants of those suffixes, though my first thought of “-xy”/“-xeen” might be too hard to distinguish in a noisy auditory environment.

These are quite silly things. Firstly, why invent words instead of just using the ltters. Obviously A creates an ambiguity with "eight", but other than that, things are fine. Perhaps A should be "aye".

The "teen" suffix is wrong; it specifically means "ten". For instance thirteen means three+ten, so it is inappropriate to pronounce 0x13 as "thirteen". So that is to say, the pronunciation issue does not begin at 1A; we shouldn't call 0x19 "nineteen", but something else.

Similarly 0x30 shouldn't be "thirty" because that word means three times ten.

There shouldn't be any common words between hex pronunciation and decimal that denote a different integer. If we say "hundred" and the context is really clear, it can be understood as 0x100, but the context isn't always clear. Attaching "hex" after every ambiguous wording ("hundred thirty-one hex" for 0x131) is verbose. How about:

   8: eight
   9: nine
   A: aye
   B: bee
   C: cee
   ...
   F: eff
  10: hex
  11: heven
  12: helve
  13: thirex
  14: forex
  15: fivex
  16: sixex
  17: sevex
  18: eightex
  19: ninex
  1A: ayex
  1B: behex
  ..
  1F: efex

  20: twexy
  30: trixy
  40: foxy
  50: fixy
  60: sixy
  70: sepsy
  80: oxy
  90: noxy
  A0: ayesy
  B0: beezy
  C0: ceezy
  D0: deezy
  E0: eezy
  F0: efzy

  100: hent (from "cent")
  1000: hil (from "mil")
  10000: han (from 万 (man))
  100000000: hoku (from 億 (oku))

  0xDEADBEEF:  deezy-ee-hent ayesy-dee han beezy-ee-hent eezy-eff.

  0xF00FCBB0:  efzy-hent-eff han, ceezy-bee-hent beezy.

Would anyone please help me understand the benefits of this? :).

This approach (and other approaches proposed in this thread) seems to add complexity but it's not that much better than just reading the characters normally.

> B78D would be 'onze mille sept cents huitante treize'

Or just read it: B, 7, 8, D. To space out a long hex number, read it in group of 4, with a pause.

The approach, other than it's not being shorter, also risks miscommunication due to the receiver might not be familiar with it, or due to the sound system has multiple very similar sounds (but totally will change the meaning when misheard) like -teen and -ty.

I don't like this system so much, but there are other systems for hexadecimal pronouncing. I like the hex intuitor system, which uses "tex" for 0x10 and "ten" for 0xA.

I have also seen other systems of representing the digits for hexadecimal, such as Nystrom's system (which also includes pronounciation).

And now, looking at Wikipedia, there are more. (The hex intuitor system I mentioned above is also called the Rogers system.)

See also http://www.bzarg.com/p/how-to-pronounce-hexadecimal/

I totally fail the point of this article. Why not just say A, B, C, D, E, F as the letters that they are? Works perfectly fine.

1F is just a two-syllable word. Just like "fiftysix" is.

AC is annty-christ

That might be one of the earliest examples of someone trying to give names to hex numbers (if I remember correctly, Knuth's TAoCP might've also contained one), but this is one of the earlier pages I remember coming across on the Internet about it: http://www.intuitor.com/hex/words.html

Remind me of Boby's "bibi-binary" :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibi-binary

It's amazing what naming conventions are used over time. In the 70's/early 80's "~" was (at least in programming circles in the UK) called a swan-hyphen, today it is often called a tilde. Though I'm sure it has many other names that have come and gone throughout the fashion of time.

Some friends and I wrote something similar as satire during undergrad. It’s ridiculous, but I was (and still am) pleased how it rolls off the tongue.

http://web.mit.edu/kade/www/misc/ieee4919.pdf

Also in 1968, the french singer — and hobbyist mathematician — Boby Lapointe ¹ proposed a graphical representation and pronunciation system for hexadecimal numbers, named bibi-binary ². The pronunciation part is based on the combinations of 4 consonants (HBKD) with 4 vowels (OAEI). It's probably less practical than a system relying on similarities with words for native numbers, but it was probably more of an artsy experiment and it produces shorter (and maybe funnier) results.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boby_Lapointe

² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibi-binary

I'll have to tell my A01C about these.

And while we're talking hex semantics, is it just me being old, or do lower case letters in hex values bother anyone else?

The only time I've been OK with this is when I've had to work with machines that only have seven-segment displays.

I'll pronounce numbers like 0xF000 as "F thousand"

Ok, but I'm still pronouncing DEADF007 as "dead foot".

There's got to be some origin for those particular names - were they just lab partners or something? I need to know!

Did you notice the line "A01C annty christeen". I thought 616 (268 base 16) was that number. We need to talk.

Wonder why they let “Ernest” into this scheme, with two syllables when all the others have one.

Didn't Malcolm Gladwell talk about how the Chinese names for numbers were were closer to their place values and therefore less confusing for calculations?

e.g. "50" is "five-tens" instead of "fifty"

There was a time when people programmed by hex and punched in code using strictly hex keyboard. I suppose this is what it was, even in the 90's, the heath kits were hex only.

This appears to confuse the representation of a number, with the quantity it represents.

wondering if anybody gets the hanky code reference in the tweet.

betty oh-bet

this is so impractical

this is cursed.