It’s been 200 years since the word “hello” was first used in print, though its beginnings date back to the 15th Century. This article investigates how has the language of greetings evolved around the world – and what it tells us about ourselves?
We use “hello” dozens of times a day without thinking – during phone calls, emails and face-to-face encounters. We sing it along with Adele and Lionel Richie, and we have watched it spun into moments of screen gold in Jerry Maguire (“You had me at hello”), and Scarface (“Say hello to my little friend!”). It’s been used to sell everything from mobile phones (Motorola’s “Hello, Moto”) to lingerie (Wonderbra’s iconic “Hello boys”), and it has been borrowed to name computer programs and celebrity magazines.
In print, this ubiquitous, friendly greeting has a surprisingly short history. Two centuries ago, on 18 January 1826, “Hello” made what is thought to be its earliest recorded appearance on the page, in a Connecticut newspaper called The Norwich Courier. Hidden among the column inches, it was a modest in-ink debut for a word that would go on to greet much of the modern world. By the 1850s, it had crossed the Atlantic to Britain, appearing in publications such as the London Literary Gazette, and it became increasingly common in print. Just like the go-to greetings in other languages, “hello” also says something about the English-speaking world, depending on which variation, abbreviation, or inflection, of the word we choose to use.
There are plenty of such forms. Whether due to dialect or accent influences, or the brevity demanded by online communication, which “hello” you choose says a lot about you, and can indicate age, nationality, or even mood. 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.
“It can be pronounced and inflected in many different ways, and these subtle intonational contours can change its meaning,” says Alessandro Duranti, professor of linguistic anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. “For example, when someone says ‘hello’ with a stretched final vowel, it can question what the other person has just said, as in ‘Hellooo, are you paying attention?’ or ‘Hellooo, you must be kidding.'”
This capacity to convey nuance through tone and form is no modern invention. Even in its first printed appearances, “hello” was a patchwork of influences, derivations and applications drawn from several languages.
The pre-printed origins of the word “hello” are disputed. The most commonly cited etymology is the Old High German “halâ” – a cry historically used to hail a ferryman. The Oxford English Dictionary also points to “halloo” (a hunting call that urged hounds to run faster) as a possible linguistic root. It also notes several early spellings, including “hullo”, “hillo” and “holla” – the latter thought to have derived from the 15th-Century French “hol”, an exclamation meaning “whoa!” or “stop!”. In English sources, the Dictionary lists the earliest form as the late-16th-Century “hollo”.
Simon Horobin, professor of English language and literature at Magdelen College, Oxford, notes that such semantic shifts and spelling changes may also be explained by regional accents and differences in pronunciation. “Especially in the example of ‘ello’ which shows the prevalent – though now stigmatised – feature of h-dropping,” he says, referring to the classist English stereotype of a dropped ‘h’ indicating a lack of education. “But for origins and early history,” he adds, “we are dependent upon written evidence, which is patchy at the best of times. For a colloquial word like this, which would have appeared much earlier and more frequently in speech than in writing, it is especially tricky to establish a definite timeline.” The selection of a standardised word form, Horobin explains, usually falls to lexicographers – those who compile dictionaries. “They base their choice on the relative prevalence of a particular spelling, though that that process is necessarily somewhat provisional and arbitrary.”
By the time the Oxford English Dictionary first went to press in 1884, “hello” was emerging as the dominant form of the greeting. Charles Dickens, however, spent the 19th Century using “hullo” in his writings, and Alexander Graham Bell (who once argued that “ahoy!” would make a superior telephone greeting) stuck with “halloo”. Bell’s rival, Thomas Edison, championed “hello”, believing it would carry clearly over even the worst phone lines. Like that of The Norwich Courier before him, Edison’s backing helped – and “hello” was established as the standard English-language greeting. But for all its so-called standardisation, “hello” has never really stood still. It began as a shout, a summons, a way to hail attention, before settling – briefly – into an accepted spelling and usage. Two centuries on from its print debut, the greeting is once again being stretched, clipped, replaced or ignored altogether. Yet whether it’s spoken aloud, typed hastily, or reduced to a small waving hand on a screen, the impulse behind it remains the same: an act of recognition, the announcing of one’s presence and just asking – however casually – to be acknowledged in return.
Interesting!!
