The Strange Roots

Spam 🐖

Spam, as in irrelevant or inappropriate postings or unsolicited email, comes from the tinned meat product via a comedy sketch in Monty Python.

Jay Hormel of Hormel Foods released the tinned ham product in 1937, trademarking it Spam with the description ‘for canned meats - namely, Spiced Ham’, implying the name was a portmanteau of the two words.

Jay Hormel threw a New Year's Eve party offering guests a $100 prize for anyone who could come up with a good name for the tinned product. The actor Ken Daigneau, who was also the brother of Hormel's vice president, suggested Spam and the rest is history.

Such large quantities of Spam were imported to post-war Britain as it rebuilt its food industry that Monty Python made a comedy sketch featuring a cafe where every item on the menu contains Spam and a chorus of vikings singing "Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam… Lovely Spam! Wonderful Spam!".

Root: The word spam is apparently blend of sp- from 'spiced' and -am from 'ham'.

Years later when marketing companies began to flood the global discussion system Usenet and email inboxes with unsolicited junk mail, it became known as Spam - a reference to the repetitive bombardment of the unwanted menu item in the Monty Python sketch.

Source: Hormel: The Spam Man - Life Magazine, 11th March 1946.
 Oxford English Dictionary | YouTube