git commit error: pathspec 'commit' did not match any file(s) known to git

The command line arguments are separated by space. If you want provide an argument with a space in it, you should quote it. So use git commit -m "initial commit".

I would just like to add--

In windows the commit message should be in double quotes (git commit -m "initial commit" instead of git commit -m 'initial commit'), as I spent about an hour, just to figure out that single quote is not working in windows.

In my case, this error was due to special characters what I was considering double quotes as I copied the command from a web page.