Historically, the notion of a unit of social evolution, and a
similar term (from Greek mneme, “memory”), first appeared in 1904 in a
work by the German evolutionary biologist Richard Semon titled Die
Mnemischen Empfindungen in ihren Beziehungen zu den
Originalempfindungen (loosely translated as “Memory-feelings in
relation to original feelings”). According to the OED, the word mneme
appears in English in 1921 in L. Simon's translation of Semon's book:
The Mneme.
According to Dawkins, who coined the phrase and didn't know about
mneme, meme represents a shortened form of mimeme (from Greek mimos,
“mimic”). Dawkins said he wanted “a monosyllable word that sounds a bit
like gene”.
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