Spam
According to the official Hormel FAQ:
Hormel omits details around how the naming contest happened:
Hormel first produced SPAM in Austin, MN in 1937. As WWII progressed the product gained worldwide use and may have been too popular in England for some youth. In December of 1970, Monty Python aired a sketch - viewable on YouTube - of a waitress offering spam with every plate available. The joke apparently plays on the abundance of SPAM in England.
A well-written article describes how MUD gaming circles evolved use of the term spam, such as a Usenet discussion from 1990:
From Internet chat usage, referring to junk email as spam was a short step.
So many questions... What if Hormel named the product PorkyTins in 1936? Would PorkyTins be how we refer to emails in 2012? What if Monty Python picked on Saltine crackers instead of SPAM, would Saltines have caught on as the catch phrase? What if computer gamers opted for a different term instead, like "static" instead of SPAM? Or were all these pieces required to make SPAM have the meaning we confer upon the word today?
Jay C. Hormel was determined to find a brand name with a distinct identity that would set it apart from the competition. The company offered a $100 prize for the best name for the luncheon meat product. The winner was Kenneth Daigneau, the actor brother of Hormel Vice President Ralph Daigneau.
Hormel omits details around how the naming contest happened:
[Jay Hormel] threw a New Year’s Eve bash with a special rule. If you wanted a free drink, you had to write down a name idea. The little slips of paper piled up quickly.
Hormel first produced SPAM in Austin, MN in 1937. As WWII progressed the product gained worldwide use and may have been too popular in England for some youth. In December of 1970, Monty Python aired a sketch - viewable on YouTube - of a waitress offering spam with every plate available. The joke apparently plays on the abundance of SPAM in England.
A well-written article describes how MUD gaming circles evolved use of the term spam, such as a Usenet discussion from 1990:
Spam refers to a Monty Python skit, where
vikings sing "Spam" at a lady who floats down from the ceiling in
a restaurant where they serve spam with everything. The verb
"to spam" would be to send lots and lots of useless information (in
particular, the word "spam") over and over to someone, thus scrolling
their screen with lots and lots of lines of "spam spam spam spam spam spam"
etc. It has been generalized to mean sending lots of crap to servers
as well as people you want to annoy the hell out of.
From Internet chat usage, referring to junk email as spam was a short step.
So many questions... What if Hormel named the product PorkyTins in 1936? Would PorkyTins be how we refer to emails in 2012? What if Monty Python picked on Saltine crackers instead of SPAM, would Saltines have caught on as the catch phrase? What if computer gamers opted for a different term instead, like "static" instead of SPAM? Or were all these pieces required to make SPAM have the meaning we confer upon the word today?
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