The first record of the word 'catchup' in English was in 1690; in 1711 the spelling 'ketchup' appeared, and finally in 1730 the spelling 'catsup' appeared. All three spelling variants of this foreign borrowing remain current.

The source of our word ketchup may be the Malay word kechap, possibly taken into Malay from the Cantonese dialect of Chinese. Kechap, like ketchup, was a sauce, but one without tomatoes; rather, it contained fish brine, herbs, and spices. Sailors seem to have brought the sauce to Europe, where it was made with locally available ingredients such as the juice of mushrooms or walnuts.

At some unknown point, when the juice of tomatoes was first used, ketchup as we know it was born. But it is important to realize that in the 18th and 19th centuries ketchup was a generic term for sauces whose only common ingredient was vinegar.

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