Free stuff - "swag" or "schwag"?

My company gives out free promotional items with the company name on it. Is this stuff called company swag or schwag?

It seems that both come up as common usages—Google searching indicates that the bias is slightly towards swag. Can anybody provide any definite proof of the root of the word and which one is more correct?

Solution 1:

It is called swag, which some people believe stands for "Stuff We All Get" (the more PG version of the two variations).

Another relevant expansion is "Souvenirs, Wearables and Gifts" (ref)

Wiktionary defines swag as

2.Handouts, freebies, or giveaways, such as those handed out at conventions.

It seems that in written English, swag is the way to go:

Perhaps the most definitive answer stems from an entry in Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue(1823), with a couple definitions for "swag" including:

SWAG. A bundle, parcel, or package ; as a swag of snow, &c. The swag, is a term used in speaking of any booty you have lately obtained, be it of what kind it may, except money ; as where did you lumber the swag? that is, where did you deposit the stolen property? [...]

Solution 2:

Both are correct, but swag is the earlier word, and the one I would use. It was used for promotional items in 2001. Before this new meaning, I knew it to mean the stuff a thief has stolen (often hauled in a swag bag in cartoons). From etymonline:

The noun sense of "ornamental festoon" is first found 1794. Colloquial sense of "promotional material" (from recording companies, etc.) was in use by 2001; swag was English criminal's slang for "quantity of stolen property, loot" from c.1839. Earlier senses of "bulky bag" (c.1300) and "big, blustering fellow" (1580s) may represent separate borrowings from the Scandinavian source.

Stuff We All Get is a later "backronym".

The first schwag as promo stuff I heard was stickers and so on given out by Flickr mid last decade, as their fun variation of swag.

(See also here for schwag as low grade marijuana, possibly from Yiddish.)

Edit: promotional swag dates back to at least 1961, and promotional schwag to at least 2001: "Of course, one must never underestimate the influence of Wayne’s World [1988-1994] and schwing."