Hello is a salutation or greeting in the English language. It is first attested in writing from 1826.
Early uses Hello, with that spelling, was used in publications in the U.S. as early as the 18 January 1826 edition of the Norwich Courier of Norwich, Connecticut.. Hullo, hillo, holla': The 600-year-old origins of the word 'hello. BBC Culture. Another early use was an 1833 American book called The Sketches and Eccentricities of Col. David Crockett, of West Tennessee,(Anonymous). The Sketches and Eccentricities of Col. David Crockett, of West Tennessee. New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833. p. 144. which was reprinted that same year in The London Literary Gazette."The Sketches and Eccentricities of Col. David Crockett, of West Tennessee". The London Literary Gazette; and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, &c. No. 883: 21 December 1833. p. 803. The word was extensively used in literature by the 1860s. Origin of the word.
Etymology According to the Oxford English Dictionary, hello is an alteration of hallo, hollo, which came from Old High German "halâ, holâ, emphatic imperative of halôn, holôn to fetch, used especially in hailing a ferryman". It also connects the development of hello to the influence of an earlier form, holla, whose origin is in the French holà (roughly, 'whoa there!', from French là 'there'). As in addition to hello, halloo,Butler, Mann, A History of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, Wilcox, Dickerman & Co., 1834, p. 106. hallo, hollo, hullo and (rarely) hillo also exist as variants or related words, the word can be spelt using any of the five vowels.
Telephone Before the telephone, verbal greetings often involved a time of day, such as "good morning". When the telephone began connecting people in different time zones, greetings without time gained popularity.
Thomas Edison is credited with popularizing hullo as a telephone greeting. In previous decades, hullo had been used as an exclamation of surprise (used early on by Charles Dickens in 1850) and halloo was shouted at ferry boat operators by people who wanted to catch a ride. According to one account, halloo was the first word Edison yelled into his strip phonograph when he discovered recorded sound in 1877. Shortly after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, he answered calls by saying "ahoy ahoy", borrowing the term used on ships. There is no evidence the greeting caught on. Edison suggested Hello! on August 15, 1877, in a letter to the president of Pittsburgh's Central District and Printing Telegraph Company, T. B. A. David:
The first name tags to include Hello may have been in 1880 at Niagara Falls, which was the site of the first telephone operators convention. By 1889, central telephone exchange operators were known as "hello-girls" because of the association between the greeting and the telephone.
A 1918 novel uses the spelling "Halloa" in the context of telephone conversations.
Hullo, hallo, and other spellings
Hello might be derived from an older spelling variant, hullo, which the American Merriam-Webster dictionary describes as a "chiefly British variant of hello", and which was originally used as an exclamation to call attention, an expression of surprise, or a greeting. Hullo is found in publications as early as 1803.The Sporting Magazine. London (1803). Volume 23, p. 12. The word hullo is still in use, with the meaning hello.
Hello is alternatively thought to come from the word hallo (1840) via hollo (also holla, holloa, halloo, halloa). The definition of hollo is to shout or an exclamation originally shouted in a hunt when the quarry was spotted:
Fowler's has it that "hallo" is first recorded "as a shout to call attention" in 1864.The New Fowler's, revised third edition by R. W. Burchfield, Oxford University Press. , p. 356. It is used by Samuel Taylor Coleridge's famous poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner written in 1798:
In many Germanic languages, including German, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch and Afrikaans, "hallo" directly translates into English as "hello". In the case of Dutch, it was used as early as 1797 in a letter from Willem Bilderdijk to his sister-in-law as a remark of astonishment.Bilderdijk, Willem, Liefde en ballingschap. Brieven 1795–1797 (ed. Marita Mathijsen). Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers, Amsterdam/Antwerp, 1997.
Webster's Dictionary from 1913 traces the etymology of holloa to the Old English halow and suggests: "Perhaps from ah + lo; compare Anglo Saxon ealā."
According to the American Heritage Dictionary, hallo is a modification of the obsolete holla (stop!), perhaps from Old French hola (ho, ho! + la, there, from Latin illac, that way).
See also Aloha As-salamu alaykum Ciao Kia ora Namaste Shalom World Hello Day
References
Further reading Hello! Hello! an article from 1880 in the San Francisco Examiner discussing use of the word on the telephone
External links
Hello in more than 800 languages OED online entry for hollo (Subscription) Merriam-Webster Dictionary: hollo, hullo