To most of us e-mail users, hearing the word “spam” makes us cringe as we think of all those irritating junk mail messages that plague our inbox every day. The term spam has not always had a negative meaning though. Before the widespread public use of the internet, SPAM had one meaning only – canned ham.

So how did this interesting word come into existence as a description for a brand of meat, and then turn into an ugly 4-letter word used to describe junk email? Following is a brief history of the word “SPAM®” as a brand name, and how it became the word “spam” as junk e-mail.

SPAM® the Canned Ham

The term “spam” has been around since 1937, when Hormel Foods introduced an innovative new food product - canned spiced ham. SPAM® did not start out with the name SPAM®, though. It was originally called HORMEL Spiced Ham, until J.C. Hormel held a contest to find a better name for the product. The winner of the $100 prize came up with the name SPAM® by using the first two letters of the words “SPiced HAm”.

Today the word “spam” is recognized all over the world, but not due to a fondness for the American canned meat product….


Spam Used as a Descriptive Term

Everyone pretty much agrees that the word “spam”, as used to describe something other than just “canned meat”, was made popular by a Monty Python sketch that aired in 1970. In the skit, a waitress in a diner recites the menu, which includes spam in every dish. A group of Vikings then break into a song that repeats the lyrics “spam, spam, spam, spam…”. The sketch is obnoxious and annoying, as the term “spam” is repeated over 200 times in just a few minutes. From this point on, the word “spam” was regarded as a humorous term used to describe something annoying or less than desirable.


Spam Takes on the Meaning: “Junk E-Mail”

Although it has been reported that first junk-emails began in the late 1970’s, the term “spam” wasn’t used as a description for unsolicited e-mail until the early 1990’s, when the public internet came into widespread use.

No one really knows exactly how the term “spam” came into use as a description for junk email, but there are a couple of popular opinions.

Some people believe that “spam” came from early internet days, when slow modems were used to access bulletin board services (BBS). A practical joker listed “nude photos” for download, which took a looooong time on a slow 2400 baud modem. When the photo was finally downloaded, it turned out to be a picture of a can of spam lunchmeat. This annoyed users, and they began warning others by noting the word “SPAM” on their posts and messages.

Others think the term came from multi user, interactive, text-based internet games that were popular in the late 1980’s. These games were referred to as Multi User Dungeons (MUD), and Multi User Shared Hallucinations (MUSH). As the story goes, a MUSH user programmed a macro to type in “spam, spam, spam…” until his connection was terminated. After that, he was known among the MUD and MUSH community as the user who “spammed” them.

Today, SPAM® the canned ham is still around, but the word “spam” has become a universal term that is understood by over one billion internet users worldwide to means one thing: unwanted, unsolicited, junk e-mail.