You don’t say “ham”…

Everybody has at some stage been the victim of spam – unwanted e-mail advertising various black market drugs, college degrees, cheap logo design, etc. But have you ever wondered why it’s called “spam”? Yeah, me too! I mean, how did the famous brand of tinned, spiced ham find its name tarnished with this brush? So I set out on a quest to find out.

My first port-of-call was dictionary.com. Here’s some of the definitions it had -

• Unsolicited e-mail, often of a commercial nature, sent indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups; junk e-mail.
• A trademark used for a canned meat product consisting primarily of chopped pork pressed into a loaf.

There were also numerous references to Monty Python which I didn’t really understand having never seen any of their shows/movies.

Next I turned to Professor Google for some answers. After a few fairly useless results, I found a site that had a solid (sounding) theory on where the term came from. The example of word usage also humoured me:

The term probably comes from a famous Monty Python skit which featured the word spam repeated over and over. The term may also have come from someone’s low opinion of the food product with the same name, which is generally perceived as a generic content-free waste of resources. (Spam is a registered trademark of Hormel Corporation, for its processed meat product.)

E.g. Mary spammed 50 USENET groups by posting the same message to each.

Turn it up, Mary! If you have any other theories, I’d love to hear them!