The Curious History of CICS Pronunciation

From Brazil’s “six” to Italy’s “chicks” and Britain’s “kicks,” one of the mainframe’s most famous technologies has inspired decades of linguistic creativity.

They Call It “Six” in Brazil

The Portuguese word for “six” is seis in Brazil and Portugal.

According to Portuguese pronunciation rules, “CICS” is pronounced like “siks” or “six,” and since there isn’t another highly used word in Portuguese with that sound, that’s what they call it. This is very confusing to English speakers when talking to Brazilian sysprogs, who may speak English very well but aren’t in the habit of calling it anything but six.

Meanwhile, if your first language is English, your brain probably did something funny when you first saw “CICS”—it decided that it couldn’t be pronounced “six” because that word was already taken.

One of the world’s most important software platforms doesn’t even have a universally accepted pronunciation.

From Illinois to England

Here’s where the story gets interesting.

CICS, or Customer Information Control System, was developed in Des Plaines, Illinois, and first became available as an IBM program product in 1969. Since then, it has powered ATMs, banking systems, and countless online applications that require high-volume transaction processing.

For its first few years, development continued in Palo Alto, California, before moving to Hursley, England, where development remains today.

But something unexpected happened when CICS crossed the Atlantic.

While Americans generally avoided the pronunciation debate by simply spelling out the letters, the British embraced a pronunciation: “kicks.”

Don’t Forget Hursley

The move to England eventually inspired one of the mainframe world’s favorite backronyms.

All CICS programs and messages begin with IBM’s assigned prefix, DFH. Over time, mainframers jokingly reinterpreted it as:

DFH = Don’t Forget Hursley

And Hursley certainly wasn’t forgotten.

The British pronunciation spread throughout much of the English-speaking mainframe community and eventually found its way back into the United States. Today, some practitioners spell out “C-I-C-S,” others say “kicks,” and many comfortably switch between the two.

Those who do both sometimes describe themselves as biCICSual.

What Does the Rest of the World Say?

Outside the English-speaking world, local pronunciation rules often won. In Japan, CICS is commonly rendered as “shikkusu” (シックス)—which, once again, means “six.”

In Italy, the pronunciation sounds remarkably like “chicks” to English ears.

The result is a fascinating linguistic map where the same technology can sound completely different depending on where you are.

The Iron Curtain Effect

Then there’s Eastern Europe.

Before 1989, IBM mainframes were largely unavailable behind the Iron Curtain. Although skilled technologists quickly adopted official IBM systems after political barriers fell, mainframe culture developed differently than it had in Western Europe and North America.

I discovered this firsthand in Poland.

Having learned enough Polish to understand how words are typically pronounced, I assumed that a Polish reading of “CICS” would sound something like the English word “cheats.”

When I finally asked Polish mainframers how they pronounced it, I was surprised by the answer.

Not “cheats.”

Not “six.”

“Kicks.”

It turns out the influence of Hursley had traveled even farther than I expected.

Next

Catch up on the goings-on of the Virtual CICS user group.