The idea of mercantile can be linked to merchandise, merchants or commerce.
Mercantile is a notion that can be associated with three concepts: merchandise , merchant and commerce . To understand their meaning, therefore, we must first know what these terms refer to.
Before moving forward, it is important to indicate that Latin is where the etymological origin of the commercial term is found. Specifically, we can determine that it comes from the sum of the conjugation of the Latin verb mercari , which can be translated as "trade or buy" , and the suffix -il .
What is commercial
A commodity is an economic good constituted as an object of purchase or sale. It is a movable thing that is exchangeable for another thing, either through barter or through money as a medium of exchange.
A merchant, on the other hand, is a subject who deals or trades in salable goods (that is, merchandise). In ancient times people used to talk about cloth merchant , book merchant , etc., depending on the sector in which the person worked, although now the term is almost not used and has been replaced by merchant .
Commerce, finally, is the socioeconomic activity based on the purchase and sale of merchandise. Commerce can be the activity, the store or commercial establishment and the group of merchants.
These three definitions allow us to understand that mercantile can be that which belongs to or relates to a merchandise ( "The police confiscated the drinks because they considered that they were mercantile objects intended for sale" ), to a merchant ( "My grandfather was a mercantile man who traveled the world” ) or to commerce ( “Commercial activity has grown by 8% in the last semester” ).
Institutions and entities
There are many entities and institutions that use the term commercial. Good examples of this are the following two:
- Universal Mercantile Bank . It is a financial entity that offers all types of loans, deposits, discounts and other operations mainly within what would be the agricultural field. And its objective is to promote and develop this sector.
- Commercial Registry of Madrid . The Spanish capital is, as its name states, where the headquarters of this institution is located, offering all types of services related to the deposit of accounts, the registration of real estate or the legalization of auditor and expert books.
Commercial law regulates commercial acts.
Commercial law
The commercial adjective, on the other hand, allows the creation of numerous expressions, such as commercial law (which regulates relations and commercial acts), commercial registry (the public registration of commercial acts) or commercial expert (a secondary education qualification oriented to accounting).
Regarding commercial law , we would have to say that it falls within what is private law and is characterized by the following hallmarks:
- Its objective is to solve and solve each and every one of the problems that arise within the commercial field.
- It is updated as the economic and social conditions of a specific country and the world in general change.
- It is international, since we live in a society where commercial transactions are carried out between companies and countries around the world.