Many jocular backronyms have been devised, such as "Something Posing As Meat" and "Spare Parts Animal Meat." "Special Purpose Army Meat" has been suggested as another apocryphal backronym referring to the product's WWII roots. Another humorous substitute is Solidified Processed Additional Meats.
According to Hormel's trademark guidelines, Spam should be spelled with all capital letters and treated as an adjective, as in the phrase "SPAM luncheon meat". As with many other trademarks, such as Xerox or Kleenex, people often refer to similar meat products as "spam". Regardless, in practice, "spam" is generally spelled and used as a proper noun.