How to Pronounce Hexadecimal Numbers

In 1999, the IEC introduced kibibyte and friends, because they were pissed off that kilobyte means 1000 bytes, but programmers wanted it to mean 1024 bytes and were insistently using it that way, correctness be damned. Unfortunately, nobody really gave a damn, and even though some things (Ubuntu for instance) show data sizes in KiB, nobody actually says “kibibyte”.

Someone asked recently on the Programmers Stack Exchange how hexadecimal numbers ought to be pronounced. In a valiant effort to pull an IEC and come up with a useful thing that nobody will use, here’s my system of pronunciation for hex numbers. The system is based on English (specifically American English) because it’s the lingua franca of programming. Enjoy.

Hexadecimal Number	Name	Decimal Equivalent
0x0000 0001	One	160 = 1
⋮	⋮	⋮
0x0000 000a	A (ay) = ten	10
0x0000 000b	B (bee) = eleven	11
0x0000 000c	C (cee) = twelve	12
⋮	⋮	⋮
0x0000 0010	Tex	1 × 161 = 16
0x0000 0020	Twentex† = two tex	2 × 161 = 32
0x0000 0030	Thirtex† = three tex	3 × 161 = 48
0x0000 0040	Fortex† = four tex	4 × 161 = 64
0x0000 0050	Fiftex† = five tex	5 × 161 = 80
0x0000 0060	Sixtex = six tex	6 × 161 = 96
0x0000 0070	Seventex = seven tex	7 × 161 = 112
0x0000 0080	Eightex = eight tex	8 × 161 = 128
0x0000 0090	Ninetex = nine tex	9 × 161 = 144
0x0000 00a0	Tentex = ten tex	10 × 161 = 160
0x0000 00b0	Eleventex = eleven tex	11 × 161 = 176
⋮	⋮	⋮
0x0000 0100	One hundrex	162 = 256
0x0000 1000	One thousax	163 = 4096
0x0001 0000	Tex thousax = one thoutex‡	164 = 65536
0x0010 0000	One hundrex thousax = tex thoutex	165 = 1048576
0x0100 0000	One milliox = one hundrex thoutex	166 = 16777216
0x1000 0000	One billiox†† = one thousax thoutex	169
⋮	⋮	⋮

† By analogy with “thirty”, “forty”, &c.

†† This system is based on the short scale—one billiox equals one thousax milliox, and one trilliox is one thousax billiox.

‡ I introduced the term “thoutex”, equal to 0x10000, because it’s more obvious that 0x0001 0000 is “one thoutex” rather than “tex thousax”: four-digit grouping makes more sense in hex, but three-digit grouping is the default in English, so I had to come up with something, and the hypothetical “thouten” sounded good in my mind to adapt.

Fractions are formed as in English, by adding -th: one texth, one hundrexth, one thousaxth, one thoutexth, &c.

Example: 0xa400f20.cd

• Ten hundrex fourtex thousax, fifteen hundrex twentex and twelvetex thirteen hundrexths
• Ay hundrex fourtex thousax, eff hundrex twentex and ceetex dee hundrexths
• Ay milliox, four hundrex thousax, eff hundrex twentex and ceetex dee hundrexths

Happy pronouncing! :)