The 600-year-old origins of the word 'hello'

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260113-hello-hiya-aloha-what-our-greetings-reveal

by 1659447091 • 6 months ago

103 70 6 months ago

nephihaha4• 6 months ago

It feels as if "hello" is fading out again. It was never completely universal. Where I grew up, people still say "aye aye" (not on a ship btw), along with the usual "good whatever".

I did once read a Christian complaining about it because it had the word "Hell" in it. A minority opinion of course.

GordonS3• 6 months ago

Scotland?

nephihaha4• 6 months ago

Yes. Aye aye, fit like, chiel?

HPsquared3• 6 months ago

On the nautical theme, Czechs say "Ahoj" (pronounced "ahoy"). Especially charming because Czechia is landlocked. I have no idea how this came about.

selimthegrim• 6 months ago

I'm still shocked at Malá mořská víla too.

secondcoming• 6 months ago

I use ‘alright?’ far more than ‘hello’

nephihaha4• 6 months ago

Exactly, there's another one. Another common one along with G'day, wassup, how ye doin?, hiya, wotcher, and all kinds of other things?

t-32• 6 months ago

I've only used it while working customer-facing jobs. Outside that, it's 'ey, yo, whatupdoe, wuzzappenin, but usually just the good old nod.

unnamed76ri• 6 months ago

Interesting read. How we got the word “goodbye” is also a cool story.

Daub• 6 months ago

One advantage of using hello as a greeting is that it is agnostic of social rank. This made it the perfect choice for greeting people of unknown social rank on the phone.

Having traveled the world quite a bit I can attest to the ubiquity of the word hello… almost everywhere I go it is understood. ‘OK’ has a similar ubiquity, and it is interesting that both words are relatively new additions to the English (universal?) language.

bloppe2• 6 months ago

These are called translingual words. 2 interesting ones are coffee and chocolate. basically no matter where you are in the world, people will understand those (with slight regional differences like "cafe", similar to hello)

pezezin• 6 months ago

Chocolate is native to the Americas and started to spread around the world in the 17th century, so it makes sense that most languages use the same word, as it is a quite recent addition.

detourdog2• 6 months ago

The article should have mentioned the Japanese phone greeting of Moshi Moshi. Which I think means I’m going to speak now. Which I think has a wonderful respect for stillness or quiet.

RestartKernel2• 6 months ago

Does it (/ did it originally) actually carry such respect from a Japanese perspective? To me, it seems like a pragmatic solution to cope with bad telephone lines more than anything.

detourdog2• 6 months ago

Could be, this was just my impression.

kalind• 6 months ago

From what I've read moshi moshi was originally pronounced "moushi moushi" and comes from the humble form of the verb to say/speak - moushiageru.

I also found it interesting that the original telephone greeting seems to have been either "oi oi" or "kora kora", which is rough sounding "male speech". This was apparently due to the fact that the first telephone users and operators were exclusively men, but as female telephone operators started to become commonplace the greeting changed to the more respectful sounding "moushi moushi".

The repetition does indeed seem to because of the poor quality of the first telephone lines.

greggsy• 6 months ago

Interesting. In Australia, people often use erhm or aah/aahm as an interjection to announce that they are about to commence speaking.

redwall_hp• 6 months ago

Japan has that too: あの (ano) and えっと (etto) are used as fillers to indicate that you're about to say something.

Moshimoshi is fully a contextual greeting. (You'd use the good morning, good day, good evening equivalents in person.)

istjohn• 6 months ago

Greek, meanwhile, uses "Γειά σου" (pronounced "yah-soo") as a typical informal greeting, offering a wish for health rather than a simple salutation.

Ironically, the root of "salutation" in latin is "salutare," to wish good health.

According to linguists, elongated variations such as "heyyy" could be construed as flirtatious, "hellaw" might suggest you're from the southern US, "howdy" from western US, and the clipped "hi" may indicate a curt disposition.

Surely "howdy" derives from "how do you do?" and not "hello."

cwmoore• 6 months ago

allo

thaumasiotes• 6 months ago

Ironically, the root of "salutation" in latin is "salutare," to wish good health.

This is an incomplete description. There is a Latin verb salvere, meaning "to be in good health".

The Latin word "hello" is salve, the direct imperative form of salvere. It is a command, not strictly a wish, to be well. It's essentially the exact equivalent of the English expression "farewell". (Except that it means "hello" rather than "goodbye".) And like "farewell", it is understood in the derived meaning, "hello", not in the literal meaning.

You could understand salvtare as meaning "to health someone" (it is technically derived from salvs "health", and not from salvere "to be healthy"), but you could also understand it as meaning "to say 'salve(te)'". It's relevant here that valere also means "to be healthy", and its imperative form vale means "goodbye", but salvtare is never going to refer to saying vale.

Lewis and Short doesn't distinguish the senses "wish health" and "greet"; salvtare does have a more direct health-related sense, but it is "to keep something safe" rather than "to wish something safety".

https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext...

That entry also notes that the sense "keep safe" of salvtare derives from sense I.A. of salvs, '"being safe and sound, health, welfare, safety" in general', while the sense "wish health, greet, salute" derives from sense I.B., '"a wish for one's welfare, a greeting, salutation" in particular'.

(Tangentially, I was charmed by the second citation for salvs I.B.: Non ego svm salvtis dignvs? "Am I not worthy of a hello?")

cyberax• 6 months ago

Russian also uses "Be Healthy!" (in imperative mode, like Latin) as a greeting: "Здравствуйте!" ("Zdravstvuite").

ofalkaed• 6 months ago

Surely "howdy" derives from "how do you do?" and not "hello."

It seems most likely but the OED (at least in the second edition) says:

[Note. The conjectured derivation from the phrase how d'ye? is impossible, since the Sc. form would then have been (huːdɪ). On the analogy of Sc. gowdie = goldy, howdy might go back to holdie, an appellative (like brownie, etc.) from hold, friendly, benevolent, kind: cf. F. sage-femme.]

But the OED has many oddities regarding American vernacular and I personally take it with a grain of salt when it comes to this area. It's only definition for "howdy" is as an alternative spelling for "howdie," a midwife and ignores the common US idea of it being "how do you do," but it does include a "see how d'ye" where it includes "howdy" and various other spellings for the sentiment of "how do you do."

AstroNutt• 6 months ago

Back in the 80's, I'd call my best friend and when his Dad would answer, he would say, "yello". Is this a North Eastern thing? His family was from Pennsylvania.

genter2• 6 months ago

I remember my dad saying "yello" in the 90's, here in Northern California. Pretty sure he just said it because he found it amusing.

bogtog• 6 months ago

I associate "yello" with Homer Simpson: https://www.facebook.com/TheDoctorZaius/videos/7233283715092...

(fingers crossed I'm not somehow doxxing myself by sharing a fb link)

Trasmatta• 6 months ago

I've heard people in Utah say this as well

krackers• 6 months ago

In japanese there is ヤッホ (Yahho~) which might be related to english "Yoo-hoo". Apparently this comes from dutch "joehoe". I've also seen etymology sources list "yoo-hoo" coming from sailing jargon "yo-ho", but these might all be related.

In the article this is not too far from "Γειά σου" (yah-soo) and the supposed root as a ferryman hail (halâ). So I guess the "yoohoo" branch of greetings might in fact be related, or otherwise it's an independent rederivation with two common and similar sounds ("yo"/"ho").

"Yello" might probably be a cute combination of yoohoo and hello. Or you could go all the way with Yahallo~.

layer83• 6 months ago

The Swiss band Yello was named after this (sort of): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yello#History

myself248• 6 months ago

Michigan here, "yello" still turns up from time to time, tongue-in-cheek.

chistev• 6 months ago

What's the origin of "Hello World"?

petepete• 6 months ago

Radio DJ William B Williams' on air greeting, apparently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_B._Williams_(DJ)

layer83• 6 months ago

For programming, the origin is the K&R book The C Programming Language.

chromatin• 6 months ago

According to linguists, elongated variations such as "heyyy" could be construed as flirtatious, "hellaw" might suggest you're from the southern US,

I am from the Southern US and I am definitely not familiar with this phonetic form. Could be what a BBC writer _imagines_ a Southerner sounds like

aduty• 6 months ago

Probably. They're not very cultured there.

krustyburger• 6 months ago

It’s for when you’re greeting a cute animal.

hansvm• 6 months ago

IPA makes these conversations less ambiguous. The point is that parts of the South are more likely to use an "ah" sound rather than an "oh" sound in certain places. The BBC's example (supposing it's in good faith) is lacking because it drops the second half of the dipthong following that morphed vowel.

Attempting to write out something close to what I'm imagining they're trying to get across in plain English:

hell-ah-ooh

It's obviously not universal across the South, but you'll rarely see it outside of the South, so "might suggest you're from..." is probably accurate.

danans• 6 months ago

According to linguists, elongated variations [of hello] such as "heyyy" ...

Not to be confused with the vocative interjection "Hey" which is likely thousands of years old, at least back to Proto Indo European, but probably earlier.

davidw2• 6 months ago

Ciao is an interesting one.

Kind of like you might say 'your humble servant' in English, the Venetians would say "sciavo vostro". Literally "your slave" - schiavo vostro in modern Italian. Which then morphed into "ciao".

baxtr• 6 months ago

In Bavaria and Austria they say "servus" which literally means slave/servant in Latin.

davidw2• 6 months ago

Yes, when they are not Grüß Gotting.

psychoslave• 6 months ago

At least in Alsace we sometime use "service" as a "you're welcome" equivalent instead of the more widespread "de rien", or "avec plaisir" you will ear in France.

arbitrary_name• 6 months ago

I hear 'servus' used frequently in southern Germany, it seems like a greeting. Interesting.

Tagbert• 6 months ago

Brasilian Portuguese adopted that as their main greeting though spelled “tchau”.

romanhn2• 6 months ago

I wonder how many non-English speaking countries adopted hello as the default phone greeting. In Russian "allo" is used, which is pretty clearly traced to Edison's hello.

On the other hand, my US-born teenage kids don't seem to be continuing this grand tradition, presumably due to most peer communication happening over text. When called, they just pick up the phone and wait for the caller to speak first. If I stay silent as well, I get an annoyed "yes?" eventually. My lessons in phone etiquette have gone unheeded.

bckr• 6 months ago

and wait for the caller to speak first

You know why this is, right? Most phone calls these days are spam or otherwise annoyances. Many are literally just seeing if a person picks up. They’re listening to see if you’re a real human being.

The phone system is FUBAR.

romanhn2• 6 months ago

I agree with the general point, and I myself don't pick up any unknown numbers. But - the kids definitely know when a parent calls, so don't think the spam thing applies here.

dghlsakjg• 6 months ago

This would be true if caller id didn’t exist. I suspect that these kids know perfectly well that it is someone they know on the other end of the line since it is incredibly rare these days for a person to call someone they know from an unknown line.

vincentperes• 6 months ago

I believe Allo is inherited from french, that was used already before edison/phone as interjection.

vic20forever• 6 months ago

When I studied in Russia (early 90s, it was still the USSR), we learned to answer the phone with слушаю (I'm listening)

ivanhoe• 6 months ago

I'm confused that, speaking of origins, they don't mention at all Spanish "hola", having literally the same meaning as hello?

layer83• 6 months ago

the lyrical, almost poetic quality of "hola" and "olá", favoured by the Romance languages

spyrja• 6 months ago

To be fair, the origins of "hello" go back much further than 600 years. Variations of it appear in Old Icelandic from almost 1000 years ago, and if you look at Old English texts from hundreds of years before that you will find greetings such as "Wes þū hāl!" (or roughly, "May you be well!"). In other words, all are based on salutations which have most likely been in use in one form or another for at least two millenia (if not longer).

sfjailbird• 6 months ago

Yeah, it seems Nordic, Nordic languages still have an archaic native version that could be the proto-hello: 'Hil' meaning 'be greeted', surviving as 'hail' in English, or, somewhat infamously, 'heil' in German.

russellbeattie• 6 months ago

Random geek thing: Apple has used a couple different versions of its iconic "hello" image originally drawn by Susan Kare.

The first one starts with an "h" that has a loop at the top, the second doesn't. If you do an image search [1], you'll see the two versions. Both have been used in advertising over the years, both in print and in TV commercials.

Susan Kare sells a signed "hello" print on her website and I bought one - it uses the second version [2]. When Apple started their advertising campaign a few years ago using the original curlicue "hello" again, I looked at the print on my wall, and noticed the difference.

I emailed Susan about it and she responded that she hadn't even noticed! She couldn't remember anything about why there were the two versions. My Occam's razor guess is that Apple had recreated the original "hello" at some point and the designer decided to skip the loop. When Susan was making the prints years ago, she looked for a nice high resolution copy of it, and Apple hadn't made the curlicue version of it "official" yet, so the second was the nicest copy out there.

(If you look carefully, there's also a "hello" print ad from the 80s that looks like someone at an ad agency just took a go at it.)

1. https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=macintosh+hello

2. https://kareprints.com/products/hello-on-blue

DemocracyFTW2• 6 months ago

The most commonly cited etymology is the Old High German "halâ" – a cry historically used to hail a ferryman.

To this day there's a ferry and company called Hal över ("take me across" in the local dialect, "Hol rüber" in standard German) https://www.hal-oever.de/de/home/ in Bremen, Northern Germany

The 600-year-old origins of the word 'hello'

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