Actually, he didn’t even name it that way, though he did later dictate how it should be pronounced before demonstrating that pronunciation with a completely different pronunciation.

Ari Lemmke, Torvalds’ coworker at the Helsinki University of Technology (HUT) who was one of the volunteer administrators for the FTP server at the time, did not think that “Freax” was a good name, so he named the project “Linux” on the server without consulting Torvalds.[58] Later, however, Torvalds consented to “Linux”.

According to a newsgroup post by Torvalds,[11] the word “Linux” should be pronounced (/ˈlɪnʊks/ ⓘ LIN-uuks) with a short ‘i’ as in ‘print’ and ‘u’ as in ‘put’. To further demonstrate how the word “Linux” should be pronounced, he included an audio guide with the kernel source code.[59] However, in this recording, he pronounces Linux as /ˈlinʊks/ (LEEN-uuks) with a short but close front unrounded vowel, instead of a near-close near-front unrounded vowel as in his newsgroup post.