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That's not why we call them incorporated. 'Body' or 'corpus' are synonyms for 'organization'. They are called corporations because the embody some coordinated e

by glibgil 12y ago

That's not why we call them incorporated. 'Body' or 'corpus' are synonyms for 'organization'. They are called corporations because the embody some coordinated effort, not because someone realized "hey, this organization seems to have a personality. I'll call it a corporation."

jacquesm 12y ago
No, 'incorporated' is another way of saying something is a legal entity independent of those that create it. But since corporations tend to assume a lot of the traits of the people that run them and are given significant subsets of the rights normally afforded to real-life human beings the line between corporate identities and persons can blur to the point where we are allowed to ascribe (some) personal traits to corporations.
- glibgil 12y ago
  The reason they are called corporations is language and vocabulary. The word is like body, as in the body politic. The etymology of corporation is Latin compare "combine in one body" or "persons united in a body for some purpose". That is why we have the word. Everything you added is modern and irrelevant to the question of why we use this word.
eruditely 12y ago
http://szabo.best.vwh.net/jointstock.html http://szabo.best.vwh.net/jointstock.html "The modern joint-stock corporation has many sources in medieval Europe. First among these was corporate law itself. Although the era is commonly referred to as "feudalism," for the hierarchy of individually owned "fiefs" of land and control of serfs as fixtures of that land, large amounts of wealth in Europe were actually controlled by corporate entities. Chief among these were church lands, the corporate entities being dioceses, religious orders and the Roman Church itself. These entities controlled a substantial fraction of the land in Western Europe. Furthermore cities (with varying degrees of political independence), merchant guilds, craft guilds, and many charitable entities (such as hospitals) were legal "corporations," i.e. artificial and perpetual legal persons under law. Some basic issues in corporate law (for example, when are officers individually liable for acts of the corporation, and when the corporation is liable for acts of its agents) had already been solved in canon law and urban law long before the joint-stock corporation." and more on the "Origins of the Joint-Stock Company"

by glibgil 12y ago

jacquesm 12y ago

No, 'incorporated' is another way of saying something is a legal entity independent of those that create it. But since corporations tend to assume a lot of the traits of the people that run them and are given significant subsets of the rights normally afforded to real-life human beings the line between corporate identities and persons can blur to the point where we are allowed to ascribe (some) personal traits to corporations.

glibgil 12y ago
The reason they are called corporations is language and vocabulary. The word is like body, as in the body politic. The etymology of corporation is Latin compare "combine in one body" or "persons united in a body for some purpose". That is why we have the word. Everything you added is modern and irrelevant to the question of why we use this word.

eruditely 12y ago

http://szabo.best.vwh.net/jointstock.html http://szabo.best.vwh.net/jointstock.html "The modern joint-stock corporation has many sources in medieval Europe. First among these was corporate law itself. Although the era is commonly referred to as "feudalism," for the hierarchy of individually owned "fiefs" of land and control of serfs as fixtures of that land, large amounts of wealth in Europe were actually controlled by corporate entities. Chief among these were church lands, the corporate entities being dioceses, religious orders and the Roman Church itself. These entities controlled a substantial fraction of the land in Western Europe. Furthermore cities (with varying degrees of political independence), merchant guilds, craft guilds, and many charitable entities (such as hospitals) were legal "corporations," i.e. artificial and perpetual legal persons under law. Some basic issues in corporate law (for example, when are officers individually liable for acts of the corporation, and when the corporation is liable for acts of its agents) had already been solved in canon law and urban law long before the joint-stock corporation." and more on the "Origins of the Joint-Stock Company"