history of "hello"?

[Esther Choi]

I don't have any references, but I did happen to recently read something on a non-academic/fun website that you might be interested to know about. The website is called "UselessKnowledge.com" (yes, that is the name of the website; take this for what it's worth). There is a section on word origins (of mainly slang words and phrases), and one of the entries is on "hello". I've copied the text below (the URL is http://www.uselessknowledge.com/word/hello.shtml).
Cheers,
Esther

--entry starts here--

Hello

This greeting is much newer than most people think. The use of hello as a greeting is only as old as the telephone. The first recorded use is from 1883.

It does, however, have earlier origins in other senses. It is a variant of hallo, which dates to 1840 and is a cry of surprise. That in turn is related to halloo, a cry to urge on hunting dogs. Halloo dates to about 1700, but a variant, aloo, appears in Shakespeare's King Lear a century earlier than that.

And there is an even earlier variant, hollo, which dates to at least 1588 when Shakespeare used it in Titus Andronicus. There are also cognates in other Germanic languages.

Hello was not a shoo-in for the telephone greeting either. It competed with several other options, including Alexander Graham Bell's suggestion of Ahoy, but pulled into an early lead and by the end of the 1880s was firmly ensconced.

"Word and Phrase Origins" are copyrighted by David Wilton

--end of entry--


Quoting samuels at anthro.umass.edu:

> I'm hoping someone can send me to some good references on this.
>
> In Claude S. Fischer's "America calling: a social history of the
> telphone
> to 1940," I've read the following:
>
> (pg. 71) AT&T tried at first to supress "hello" as a vulgarity. It
> failed
> decisively, so much so that it later endorrsed the nickname,
> hello-girls,
> for its operators.
>
> (pg. 186) In the late 1940s answering a call with "hello" - the battle
> against which AT&T had long ago surrendered - was still controversial
> to
> society advice-givers. Millicent Fenwick judged that "Hello" wwas not,
> according to tradition, proper form for servants, but was acceptable
> among
> equals. Margarey Wilson wrote, "When answering the telephone it is
> perfectly correct to say 'Hello.' Some people seem to find that it is
> undignified...[b]ut experiment shows that any other words sound
> funnier
> still.
>
> Does anyone know the social history of "hello" as a greeting? Is there
> literature on the subject? (Similarly, I've heard that "O.K." originated
> as
> telegraph lingo.)
>
> Many thanks for all responses.
>
> David
>
>
> David W. Samuels
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> 212 Machmer Hall
> University of Massachusetts
> Amherst, MA 01003
>
> VOX: (413) 545-2702
> FAX: (413) 545-9494
> email: samuels at anthro.umass.edu
> http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~samuels/
>
> wot 2 be got 2 be
>
>
>