It’s called corned beef because of the salt , not because of the vegetable corn.

The Old Meaning of “Corn”

Historically, the word corn in English meant a “small hard particle” or grain of something, like sand or salt, not just the yellow kernels on a cob. Large, coarse crystals of curing salt were therefore called “corns of salt.”

How That Became “Corned Beef”

When people preserved beef before refrigeration, they packed it in those big “corns” of salt to keep it from spoiling. That process was called “corning,” so beef treated this way naturally became known as “corned beef.”

A Tiny Bit of Food History

By the 16th–17th centuries, “corning” with salt was a common preservation method for meats like pork, fish, and beef. In Ireland, abundant cheap salt helped make salted, “corned” beef an important export, especially to England, and the name stuck even as the everyday meaning of “corn” shifted to the modern grain.

TL;DR: There’s no corn in corned beef because corn originally referred to the coarse grains of salt used to cure the meat, not to the corn-on-the-cob you’re picturing.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.