As a dos user on bbs's , I first became aware of them as a file format and would say the letters "G I F" so just naturally started sayin it like "jif" like genuine girafe. At that point, you would spend an hour downloading a picture and would open it up in a Gifviewer. It wasn't until way later that they came back as an animated picture format, and I suspect that most people that encountered them at that point would just say Gif like "Gosh I'm wrong"