Where does spam come from?

I'm not asking about junk-email, which would be an almost theological question, akin to "Where does evil come from?" I'm asking about the word 'spam,' both for e-mail and for the 'food' (and I use the term loosely) product.

Answer forthcoming, after we all have the fun of playing with the question.

there must be a hogshead of urban legends regarding spam, but a recent OED entry goes with:

[App. blend of SP(ICED ppl. a. + H)AM n.1, but see also quot. 1937]

1937 Squeal 1 July 1/2 In the last month Geo. A. hormel & Co...launched the product spam... The ‘think-up’ of the name [is] credited to Kenneth Daigneau, New York actor... Seems as if he had considered the word a good memorable
trade-name for some time, had only waited for a product to attach it to.

---

the significance of the 1937 citation (Squeal) just barrels in..

The "junk e-mail" meaning of "spam", of course, comes from the famous Monty Python sketch.

See The Word Detective.

It was New Year's Eve at the end of 1936. Hormel Foods, a pork producer, needed to name a new a new product that it concocted to make use of the excess pork shoulder it had aplenty. At the company's New Year's party, President Jay Hormel held a naming contest, offering a drink for each entry and $100 to the winner. Actor Kenneth Daigneau, the brother of a Hormel VP, was attending. Late at night – presumably after many drinks, he proposed the winning name, SPAM.

Some say 'spam' stands for spiced ham; others suggest soulder of pork and ham. My thought is that we can only guess what a drunken actor had in mind. Indeed, even he may not have known.

tsuwm: the significance of the 1937 citation (Squeal) just barrels in

"Squeal" was the company's in-house magazine. I'm assuming it was named after the old line that they were using "everything about the pig except the squeal".

Does anyone know where that line comes from?

Here's an item to jot down in your Book of Little-Known Facts: People eat more Spam in Hawaii than in any other U.S. state.

Hic, I couldn't specifically find the answer to your question. However, I found this site. It probably means that you can eat everything from the pig, except the squeal.

To back up what J.T. said, my ex-wife just recently returned from an extended stay in "the islands" and, when I mentioned J.T.'s above post, reported that, yes, in Hawaii, Spam is one of the five basic food groups. It's entirely possible that they eat more Spam there than in the next 10 states put together but she didn't know why.

As a sidenote, there is a huge (no pun intended) problem with obesity in Hawaii that can't all be explained away by genes. Maybe a deSpamification of Hawaii is in order.

CJ says, It's entirely possible that they eat more Spam there (Hawaii) than in the next 10 states put together

This intrigued me enough to check. Hormel's site says that in a year, SPAM has

• 122 million cans worldwide sales
• ~10½ million cans US consumption (calculated: 1 per 3 seconds = 10½ mil per year)
• > 6.7 million cans Hawaii sales.

If that's accurate, Hawaii accounts for about 2/3 of U.S. sales, about twice as much as all other states combined.

Hard to believe. I was curious enough to send an inquiry to Hormel's PR department. Stand by for further developments.

Has anyone here ever eaten spam? I made the huge mistake of making a concoction once of spam and Velveeta cheese, having received the dubious recipe from some friends (???). None of us ate more than one bite. It seemed as though we were eating pure salt.

I have... it's pretty nasty... but my mom would serve it up once in awhile, I guess when she was pressed for time. Gosh, she had 5 kids, when would that have been?? But I haven't eaten it since I was in grammar school, and that was back in the .... well, it was a long time ago. Meat in a can... is not my cup of tea!..

I think I ate some Spam a long time ago. Not sure.

But I do have a Spam story.

While on a trip to Mainland U.S.A. I visited the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver and there I bought the Spanish edition of Louis L'Amour's novel, "The Cherokee Trail." Its setting is country that I know very well. Although I have read several of that author's books, I had never seen that particular one, and still have not seen the original -- in English.

Back home in Hawaii, I decided on a challenge to myself. I would translate the book from Spanish to English, doing my best to use Mr. L'Amour's style. For example, "Vete!" could be "Go," or "Leave," but I used "Skedaddle." And so on.

The task took about a month of my spare time, and I never printed a copy.

Shortly after I finished the translation, my computer "died." I took it to a computer repair shop in Hilo, where they said it was beyond repair. I telephoned a friend in Kansas who has a computer expert on his payroll. "Take out the hard drive and send it to me," he said, so I did that. His knowledgeable employee was able to retrieve everything on my hard drive. Almost. The L'Amour translation was irretrievably lost.

I told my friend Daniel about all of that. I said it reminded me of a story that made the rounds just after World War Two: The bride of an Army officer wanted to impress her husband, who had been away during the war eating Army chow. She used a recipe handed down from her mother for a "ham loaf." She carefully purchased just the right ingredients, spent the day grinding, mixing, adding spices, and so on, then she baked it and served it. Her husband took on bite and said, "My God! You've made SPAM !!!"

The obvious analogy is that Louis L'Amour's literary works are not exactly top quality, but, like Spam, are very very popular. I could have bought the original, in English, for a pittance, but ....

.... "And so," I told Daniel, "The only real benefit from the whole exercise is that it kept my Spanish alive."

And Daniel said, "Not your Spanish .... your Spamish."