Why is salary called salary?

because they are two different things. a salary is a fixed amount of money that an employee will get, for example, £20,000 per year. other work, such as overtime will not affect the salary and the employee will receive the fixed amount regardless of any extra work he/she may have done. a wage is the amount of money that an employee will receive per hour, for example, £5 per hour. this means that the amount of money a person earns is based on the amount of time they spend working. overtime is included in this, and some employees may get about 50% more per hour doing over time.