Namcub is the Sumerian

Sumerian language

Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer, which was spoken in southern Mesopotamia since at least the 4th millennium BC. During the 3rd millennium BC, there developed a very intimate cultural symbiosis between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism...

 word for an incantation

Incantation

An incantation or enchantment is a charm or spell created using words. An incantation may take place during a ritual, either a hymn or prayer, and may invoke or praise a deity. In magic, occultism, witchcraft it may be used with the intention of casting a spell on an object or a person...

 or self-fulfilling prophecy

Self-fulfilling prophecy

A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to positive feedback between belief and behavior. Although examples of such prophecies can be found in literature as far back as ancient Greece and...

. The concept (and anglicized spelling "nam-shub") was popularized by Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson

Neal Town Stephenson is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction.Difficult to categorize, his novels have been variously referred to as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, and postcyberpunk...

's novel Snow Crash

Snow Crash

Snow Crash is Neal Stephenson's third novel, published in 1992. Like many of Stephenson's other novels it covers history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, religion, computer science, politics, cryptography, memetics, and philosophy....

.

Meaning and nuances

Various namcub have been used in Sumerian Mythology, primarily by the Gods, for various purposes. As is noted in Snow Crash, most of the uses correspond to mental or psychological changes, as opposed to changes in the physical world, which in the context of the book implies that it is an early form of NLP

Neuro-linguistic programming

Neuro-linguistic programming is an approach to psychotherapy, self-help and organizational change. Founders Richard Bandler and John Grinder say that NLP is a model of interpersonal communication and a system of alternative therapy which seeks to educate people in self-awareness and effective...

. Some examples are its use in Enki

Enki

Enki is a god in Sumerian mythology, later known as Ea in Akkadian and Babylonian mythology. He was originally patron god of the city of Eridu, but later the influence of his cult spread throughout Mesopotamia and to the Canaanites, Hittites and Hurrians...

 and Innana and the Me

Me (mythology)

In Sumerian mythology, a me or ñe or parşu is one of the decrees of the gods foundational to those social institutions, religious practices, technologies, behaviors, mores, and human conditions that make civilization, as the Sumerians understood it, possible...

, in which a namcub is used to alternately command Nuddimud (in this myth a servant of Enki

Enki

Enki is a god in Sumerian mythology, later known as Ea in Akkadian and Babylonian mythology. He was originally patron god of the city of Eridu, but later the influence of his cult spread throughout Mesopotamia and to the Canaanites, Hittites and Hurrians...

, not a pseudonym for Enki

Enki

Enki is a god in Sumerian mythology, later known as Ea in Akkadian and Babylonian mythology. He was originally patron god of the city of Eridu, but later the influence of his cult spread throughout Mesopotamia and to the Canaanites, Hittites and Hurrians...

 himself) and make him forget the commands (by Innana), and in "Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta

Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta

Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta is a legendary Sumerian account, of preserved, early post-Sumerian copies, composed in the Neo-Sumerian period ....

", which contains the best known namcub (the Namcub of Nuddimud, written in Snow Crash as "The Namshub of Enki").

Notation, transliteration, and confusion

Neal Stephenson used primarily the works of Samuel Kramer as a source (including his translation of "The Namshub of Enki"), and in the process propagated a non-standard transliteration

Transliteration

Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...

 of various words, including namcub. By using the spelling Namshub (which was a rough phonetic transliteration by Kramer, whose work predates most of the standard transliteration techniques for the Sumerian language), he popularized a spelling that is incompatible with current techniques and notation. The 'c' in namcub in this article is a specialized notation for the 'š', which is pronounced like the 'sh' in "ship

Ship

Since the end of the age of sail a ship has been any large buoyant marine vessel. Ships are generally distinguished from boats based on size and cargo or passenger capacity. Ships are used on lakes, seas, and rivers for a variety of activities, such as the transport of people or goods, fishing,...

".