The Etymology of spam email is fascinating.
Why?
What do a canned luncheon meat and a British television comedy from the 1970s have to do with spam email?
They came together in the minds of early users of the Internet when they began calling the floods of unwanted comments and email that plagued those early days “spam“.
In the post, we’re doing to discuss the history of the word SPAM , its origins, and meanings. In addition to discussing where the term ‘spam email’ comes from, we’re going to tell you why canned ham is called SPAM, Monty Python’s role in this, and lastly how it became associated with unwanted emails.
American Ingenuity Introduces SPAM
If our non-US readers that are unfamiliar with this famous brand, you should know that SPAM is an American canned luncheon meat.
The Hormel Foods Corporation introduced SPAM in 1937.
Jay Hormel, the owner’s son, invented it as a way to peddle the (then unprofitable) pork shoulder, according to The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America.
Made primarily from pork, it gained worldwide fame when supplied to Allied Forces during World War II by the U.S. Government.
The precooked tins were durable and didn’t need refrigeration. As a result, GIs and Marines loved SPAM, and the small cans went everywhere, mass-produced by the tens of millions.
Today it is sold and loved around the world (except in the Middle East and North Africa, due to their dietary restrictions). You can even buy it on Amazon.
In 2007, Hormel calculated that they had sold over 7 billion cans. Furthermore, in July 2017, Hormel celebrated SPAM’s 80th anniversary.
By now you’re probably wondering…
What does SPAM stand for?
It’s easy, Hormel invented the name as a contraction of “Spiced Ham“. However, it was so popular that by the 1960s, consumers called every brand of canned ham “spam“.
Bottom line
You have to understand British Humor to understand to appreciate the history of spam email.
So let’s get to it and discuss a British comedy program’s role in this story.
Not a Real Circus
Monty Python’s Flying Circus was a popular TV program on the BBC in the early 1970s. The group left TV and made several major motion pictures as well.
In their second season, they had Spam-eating Vikings invade an English diner, in one of their more outlandish skits. Every breakfast special on the menu included the canned meat, sometimes more than once!
Descending on strings as the skit begins, a British couple argues over what to order.
The Vikings sang a silly song every time the canned luncheon meat was mentioned too many times. It began, “Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam,” and you can view it below. The skit, and the song, stuck in the minds of Monty Python fans.
American Public Broadcasting imported the show from the BBC. That is how American viewers learned of the program, in reruns throughout the 70s and 80s. PBS had a select viewership, attracting a smarter audience at that time, due to their news and documentary programming.
Obviously, these same fans grew up to be the first generation of computer pioneers and internet inventors.
The Vikings interrupted conversations by singing “SPAM” in the skit. Almost every menu item had SPAM in it. The female customer complained loudly, “I don’t like SPAM!“
Does that sound familiar?
The First Unsolicited Email
Evidently, the first documented commercial spam message was advertising a new model of Digital Equipment Corporation computers.
As a result, we know that the first spammer was Gary Thuerk.
He sent an unsolicited email across the ARPANET (the military/educational communications network that was the predecessor to the Internet) to 393 recipients in 1978.
What a pioneer, they said sarcastically.
However, people were not calling it “spam” just yet.
Spam Email
USENET group users didn’t start calling that unwanted text clogging up the feed “spam” until the 1980s.
By the 1990s, the term had stuck.
The New Oxford Dictionary of English added this definition for unwanted messages in 1998. (Hormel Foods spells the luncheon meat in all capital letters to differentiate, and asks others to do so.)
It defined spam as “irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of newsgroups or users.”
If you’re wondering what does spam stand for it computer terms, it has various possible acronym meanings. These were, of course, derived later.
For example:
Most people refer to SPAM as Stupid Pointless Annoying Messages, Sending People Annoying Mail, and Sending Persistently Annoying Mail.
You get the point!
This is how a silly skit from Monty Python’s second season mocking SPAM’s ubiquity became descriptive of unwanted email. Today, 57 percent of e-mail traffic worldwide are spam emails.
Many of our inboxes get flooded daily with email that we delete.
Today, email marketing and autoresponders have become a huge deal, and to some the lines between spam emails and email marketing are blurred. That is because the difference between the two is subtle, and sometime a business spams their clients without realizing it. However, companies that follow the best marketing practices know how to not spam their customers. That’s something we all have to keep in mind, in hopes of reducing our spamming problem.
We are no closer to slowing that torrent of unwanted junk mail, but now, at least you know why we call it “spam email”.