Hello! There's a good chance you've used this word at least once today. You probably said it to your neighbor in the elevator, to the barista before ordering, or maybe to your coworkers when you came into work. There's a reason why "hello" is the first word you learn when studying a new language: With it, you can introduce yourself, get someone's attention, and signal that you're friendly.
Despite the word's popularity, though, you probably don't know where "hello" actually comes from. Has it always been a greeting? Was another word used in its place before? Who even came up with it—and why?
Well, if you've ever been curious about the origin of "hello," we have some answers for you. This might come as a bit of a surprise considering how much people use it every day, but the word "hello" has only been around for about 150 years. The first record of the word goes back to the 1800s, when it was used less as a greeting and more as an expression of surprise.
But what were people saying before the 1800s to greet each other? A common word people used all the way from the Middle Ages through Shakespeare's time was "hail." It carried a rather benevolent undertone, as it was related to words like "health" and "whole." We may not be using it as a greeting in the 21st century, but we still use a variation of it in our daily language: "holler."
The widespread use of "hello" as a greeting is thanks to Thomas Edison. After Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in the late 1800s, people needed a way to answer the new device, and Edison took it upon himself to come up with a salutation. When he did, The New York Times recalls that he wrote an enthusiastic letter to a friend named Mr. David on August 15, 1877, explaining his solution.
"Friend David," wrote Edison, "I don't think we shall need a call bell as Hello! can be heard 10 to 20 feet away. What do you think? EDISON."
Graham Bell did not like Edison's idea one bit. He preferred the word "ahoy," which came from the Dutch greeting word "hoi." (Yes, it was mostly a nautical term back then, too.) And yet, when the first telephone exchanges equipped by Edison were set up all across the United States, the operating manuals that came with them included two greeting options: "Hello" or "What is wanted?" Likely because "What is wanted?" is quite lengthy, by the 1880s, "hello" was the common and preferred greeting.
Next time someone asks you about the origin of "hello," you can explain to them that it goes all the way back to Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison (and that "ahoy" almost ended up being the de facto greeting—yikes).
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