Pronunciation of "www"

www is an initialism for World Wide Web, most often styled in lowercase because it appears as the first component of domain names. In English, WWW is the longest possible three-letter acronym to spell out, requiring nine syllables, whereas the twelve letters in "World Wide Web" are pronounced with only three syllables. The late Douglas Adams once quipped:

Tim Berners-Lee refuted suggestions to change the World Wide Web name over pronunciation issues, arguing that this peculiar feature of the name would make it memorable. As his invention gradually gained ubiquity, it came to be called simply "the Web", an echo to "the Net".

English pronunciation

Standard English pronunciation is to pronounce the three letters of "www" as (double-you double-you double-you).
Alternate forms include

(dub-ya dub-ya dub-ya)

(wuh wuh wuh)

(dub dub dub)

(triple double-you)

(three dub)

(trip dub)

(double-you cubed)

In New Zealand and sometimes in Australia, the "dub-dub-dub" variant is widely accepted (for example its use in TV commercials appears standard) and is more concise than other English renditions. Also commonly used is "all the double-you-s".

In the Southern United States the two-syllable pronunciation of "w", is often used, even when spoken by persons who would normally use the standard three-syllable pronunciation for a single letter w.

w³ , is inspired from mathematical notation w to the power of 3. Many of the original papers describing the World Wide Web abbreviated it this way, and the World Wide Web Consortium was named according to this early usage. The original W3C logo had a superscripted 3 and the consortium's domain name is still w3.org. However, usage of the w³ form is somewhat deprecated.

Saying "www" in other languages

In many languages which give the letter W a name that translates to "double V", each w is substituted by a v, so www is shortened to "vvv" instead of, for instance:

• "ве-ве-ве" in Serbian (pronounced ve-ve-ve). Another frequently used way to pronounce it is в-в-в (v-v-v) without any vowels. Correct, but used less often, is "duplove-duplove-duplove".
• "double vé, double vé, double vé" in French
• "vé, vé, vé" in Czech
• "vee vee vee" (commonly used) in Estonian (correct, but used less often, is "kaksisvee kaksisvee kaksisvee")
• "kaksoisvee, kaksoisvee, kaksoisvee" in Finnish (although "ve, ve, ve" is commonly used (see below))
• "duplavé, duplavé, duplavé" or "vé, vé, vé" in Hungarian
• "doppia vu, doppia vu, doppia vu" in Italian, although the shortened form "vu vu vu" is widely preferred despite being technically incorrect (it means "vvv").
• "tvöfalt vaff, tvöfalt vaff, tvöfalt vaff" or "vaff, vaff, vaff" in Icelandic
• "dablio, dablio, dablio" in Portuguese
• "dáblio, dáblio, dáblio" in Brazilian Portuguese
• "wu, wu, wu" in Polish (pronounced voo-voo-voo)
• "doble u, doble u, doble u" or "doble ve, doble ve, doble ve" in Spanish
• "ве-ве-ве" in Macedonian (pronounced ve-ve-ve)
• "вэ-вэ-вэ" in Russian (pronounced ve-ve-ve). It May Be heard in the "WWW" song by the band Leningrad1. However, the official pronunciation is "тройное дабл-ю" ("triple double-u")
• "wé, wé, wé" in Dutch (pronounced way-way-way)
• "дабл ю, дабл ю, дабл ю" (pronounced "double u, double u, double u") in Ukrainian, although "ве, ве, ве" (ve-ve-ve) and (officially) "порійне дабл ю" are also used.
• "dabıl yu, dabıl yu, dabıl yu" or "çift ve, çift ve, çift ve" or "ve ve ve" in Turkish

In some languages, such as Estonian, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish, it is common practice to say "ve" instead of "dobbel-ve" in abbreviations, so "www" becomes "ve, ve, ve". This is also used by Romanian, Serbian, etc.

In German, Dutch, Afrikaans and other languages, this problem doesn't occur because the letter W is already uttered as a single syllable.

Some French speakers prefer the "3w" form, pronounced "trois doubles-vés" or "triple double-vé". In Spanish "3w" can be either "triple doble u", "doble u, doble u, doble u" (Latin America), "doble ve, doble ve, doble ve" (Argentina) or "triple uve doble" (Spain). In Italian it is commonly shortened to "vu, vu, vu".

In Chinese, the World Wide Web is commonly translated to wàn wéi wǎng (), i.e. "ten-thousand dimensional net", creating an elegant pun on the three w’s and the original meaning.