The practice of marketing and the use of modern marketing words may date back further in history than many people realise.
Edward Cave, who introduced magazines as an early form of printed promotion in 1730s, is often thought of as an enabler of modern advertising, along with people like Elizabeth Mallet, producer of the first British newspaper Daily Courant, and William Taylor, the founder of one of the first advertising agencies.
But while the invention of the printing press centuries prior surely contributed to the growth of the marketing business in the 1700s, marketing and product promotion may be almost as old the earliest forms of writing.
Marketing – as it’s known today – can be traced back to Mesopotamian societies, who engaged in trade and commerce to share products across different towns. Manufacturers of common goods would stamp their products with signature marks that bore the vendor’s name and made claims about the quality of the goods.
This very act of labelling merchandise, used by Mesopotamian merchants to distinguish their products from those of competitors, seems to be closely linked to the marketing language we use today.
A new perspective on the origins of ‘marketing’
The word marketing sounds strikingly similar to the modern English phrase “mark a thing”. And marking their goods is what Mesopotamian manufacturers did by imprinting a name or sign on their goods.
A phonetic origin of the word marketing is much more compelling than the origins proposed by modern etymologists – who at best, link marketing to the word market or mercari, which means “to buy” in Latin.
Other possible derivations have linked mercari to Mercury, as in the metal or planet, thereby hinting at an astrological connection between the planet and the field of marketing. The Mesopotamians associated the planet Mercury (Nabû) with the Babylonian god of writing and accounting, which would support a Mesopotamian origin of the word marketing.
And as you continue reading, you’ll see that much of our current marketing language can be linked to the Neolithic practices of labelling products in cuneiform script and transporting goods along the two Mesopotamian waterways.
The Mesopotamian roots of design, brand and copywriting
The word design sounds much like “the sign”, or signature that could be burnt onto or impressed upon Mesopotamian goods to identify their origin and manufacturer.
Meanwhile, the word brand, which means fire in German, could easily be a reference to the way people (and products) were marked with a burning iron to allow their identification. Bottle stops stamped with symbols some 5000 years ago are also evidence of the first branded goods, discovered in Mesopotamia, according to archaeologist David Wengrow.
The term copywriting – in combining the words copy and writing – might refer to the Mesopotamian practice of copying cuneiform characters and carving them into clay tables or physical goods. This also supported by the etymology of the word writing which can be traced back to the Old High German ritzan, which literally means to carve or scratch.
This means copywriting may be one of just three marketing words with a Mesopotamian origin. But what about other common marketing terms like prospect, consumer and channel or even social media influencer?
Can we trace these marketing words back to Mesopotamia?
It would be strange if modern marketing words have such old roots that they can be traced back to one of the earliest (known) civilisations. After all, the word ‘influencer’ only gained popularity with the rise of social media, which wasn’t until 10 years ago – while the Mesopotamians would have lived around 10.000 years prior.
Also, etymological research has not made explicit connections between marketing language and the modes of communication, trade and business in Mesopotamia. Instead, it prefers to trace many marketing words back to Latin or Greek civilisations.
For example, the word consume can be thought of as a combination of con (meaning against) and summe (meaning sum), which would refer to something you get against a sum of money or payment.
Similarly, the term radio may well be a concatenation of ray dio, which could be the light or ray of God – while analytics may come from ana (again) lytis (cut apart), as in the dissection of data.
Trade along the Mesopotamian waterways – another possible link?
However, with a bit of creativity we can create a linguistic link between modern marketing and the civilisation of Mesopotamia. Consumer, for example, could just as well be a concatenation of con (meaning ‘with) and Sumer (meaning the Sumerian people). This could be a reference to the practice of trading with the people of Sumer, as the Sumerian city states relied on the exchange of goods due to a lack of specific raw materials including stone, metal and wood.
These raw materials and many other goods, were transported along the Mesopotamian waterways, consisting primarily in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that flowed from North to South.
Mesopotamians traded along the rivers using sailboats – and perhaps marketing words like churn and channel owe their origin and symbolic meaning to this aquatic connection. After all, the channels and course of the Tigris and Euphrates were the primary distribution and communication routes for merchants. They allowed traders to reach their customers in the same way that we can use marketing channels to find and communicate with prospective buyers today.
The word churn, which is used in marketing to describe the rate at which customers leave or cycle through a company, could be a symbolic reference to the unpredictable flooding of the Tigris River that threatened merchants, and washed away entire communities living near the river banks, in the same way, that a high rate of churn can be a risk to modern business.
Meanwhile, the marketing (and sales) term prospect, probably a combination of pro (forward) and spect (look), as in to see what lies ahead, may be a reference to the important looking forward (along the river) to identify potential opportunities, and spot those that may become customers.
Even the term hook and the latter half of clickbait may be intricately linked to how Mesopotamians used the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. According to Dietrich Sahrhage (1999), fishing techniques that involved nets, hooks and spears were already well developed in ancient Mesopotamia, and provided a source of food to those who lived by the river banks.
The act of sourcing and catching fish exhibits strong parallels with the process of acquiring customers, as both contribute to one’s livelihood and rely on strategies that attract a designated target. This would support a symbolic – and possibly direct connection, between marketing language and the business models along the waterways of Mesopotamia.
While not limited to fishing, the modern word influencer could be considered a reference to the necessity of being in flow (or moving along the river) to do business in Mesopotamia, just as modern influencers live from producing a steady stream(!) of online content.
We can also pick up on this theme of movement when looking at inbound and outbound, which originally described the departure and homecoming of ships – but have been adopted as marketing words that describe the direction from which a relationship between customer and vendor is built.
A Lost Connection or Newly Invented Marketing Terms?
That said, many common marketing words do not seem to have the Mesopotamian roots that I propose in this article.
Take for example, the word price. According to etymologists, it can be derived from the Latin word pretium which means reward, prize or value. However, I ask you to consider for a moment that price sounds and looks similar to the German word Prise, which can refer to ships or merchandise captured during war.
This would hint at a possible maritime connection, but we have yet failed to find evidence for a direct link to Mesopotamian life. This changes when we consider the German expression ‘eine Prise Salz’, which means a pinch of salt. Salt was an important medium of exchange in Mesopotamia, acting as precursor to modern currency. Therefore, the value and hence price of a product could be accounted for in salt (or bikumen as it was known then).
While this Mesopotamian connection may seem far-fetched – especially at first sight, it cannot be ruled out until further research is conducted.
After all, we may have simply lost the understanding of old words, and we know that language has evolved substantially throughout the past 10.000 years. We simply haven’t explored all the possible connections between modern marketing language and the trade business in Mesopotamia.
Take, for example, the word customer. At first glance, it would seem that the word must be related to customs or costumes, perhaps, or the Latin term consuetudo, meaning habit, practice or tradition. And indeed, in many cases, a customer is a person who buys from a business in a regular or habitual manner.
But there may be more hidden inside this word. If we split customer into its core syllables, we can deduce an alternative meaning. Let’s first consider the syllable, cus-, which sounds somewhat similar to the German word Kuss and the Middle English terms cos and cus. All of these literally mean kiss.
Now, the last syllable -mer could be the English equivalent of one of two German words: mehr (more) or Meer (the Sea). From these two syllables, we could deduce two possible origins and meanings of the word customer:
- Kiss more
- Kiss the sea
The first option seems plausible in so far that kissing is a sign of appreciation and a customer usually appreciates and desires more than they currently have. The second option would also be possible if we assume that a person in Mesopotamia would have loved and valued (kissed) those that came from the sea (and brought new goods and merchandise with them).
Alternatively, the syllable -mer could be an abbreviated version of the modern English word mark, or sign. This would then make a customer a person who loves (kisses) a certain brand (mark).
Of course, such interpretations are speculative by their very nature and further research would be required to prove or disprove a connection. That said, they do support the hypothesis that there may be more similarities between modern marketing words and the Mesopotamian trade business than we have so far discovered.
But even with that in mind, it may be argued that some words cannot be linked to Mesopotamian sales and marketing, as the emerged only as the practice of these two disciplines themselves evolved. This would seem true for newer marketing terms like growth hacking, viral marketing and user-generated content, just to a new a few.
Or how would you propose to link these – and many other terms – to business activities in the ancient civilisation of Mesopotamia?
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