How is TikZ meant to be pronounced? "tiks", "tikz" or "tik-zee"?

Question

Disclaimer: I'm not sure this question is on topic on either the main site or the meta site, but the question itself is definitely "meta".

Knuth writes about the canonical pronunciation of TeX at the beginning of his TeXbook. But what about TikZ? How is it meant to be pronounced? Is there some canonical pronunciation for it?

I personally pronounce it "tiks", but all speakers in a podcast I listened to recently were pronouncing it "tik-zee". (Forgive me for not using the International Phonetic Alphabet; I'm no expert.)

Obviously, I'm not asking how you, in particular, pronounce it, but for an authoritative source about some canonical pronunciation of TikZ, if any exists.

Answer 1

Even though the functionality of TikZ is somewhat magical, the Z it is not referring to a Zauberprogramm (magic tool) but to a Zeichenprogramm (drawing tool).

The maintainers of TikZ are German and the meaning of "TikZ" is German so I would pronounce it as in German. I just looked up the IPA for my way of pronouncing it and it is the same as each first letter of the four words written in IPA. So I guess, I should be more or less right.

If you can't read IPA: I would describe the pronunciation as tikts.

% arara: lualatex

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Linux Libertine O}

\begin{document}
TikZ [tɪkʦ] ist [ɪst] kein [kaɪ̯n] Zeichenprogramm [ˈʦaɪ̯çn̩pʀoˈɡʀam]

\emph{TikZ ain't no drawing tool}
\end{document}