I still remember the moment I first heard this fact – it was on a TV show back in Bulgaria. A character casually mentioned that hello wasn’t always a greeting, which made me curious about the history of hello as a greeting. In Bulgarian, we don’t even use hello when answering the phone. Instead, we say “Alo” or sometimes “Da, molya” (which means “Yes, please”). So, learning that English speakers didn’t always use hello either made me wonder – how did it even become the standard greeting?
As it turns out, hello wasn’t always the go-to way to start a conversation. In fact, if things had gone differently, English speakers might all be answering calls with “Ahoy” instead! (Yes, really.)
So how did hello transform from an exclamation of surprise to the universal way people start phone calls in English? Let’s find out!
Before the phone: “Hello” had a different meaning
Long before Alexander Graham Bell introduced the telephone in 1876, hello already existed in the English language – but not as a way to greet people. Instead, it was used to express surprise or call attention, much like we say “hey” or “whoa” today.
For example, if someone dropped a plate in the 1800s, a person nearby might have exclaimed, “Hello! What happened?” It was more of an exclamation than a polite way to start a conversation.
The word itself comes from older forms like holla and hullo, which were used for similar purposes. Think of how we might shout “Ahoy” or “Hey there!” to get someone’s attention.
So, why do we answer the phone with “hello”?
When the telephone was invented, there was no standard way to start a call. Alexander Graham Bell, the man behind the first practical telephone, actually preferred saying “Ahoy” when answering. He borrowed this from maritime culture, where sailors used it to hail ships.
However, Thomas Edison, Bell’s competitor and the inventor of many other groundbreaking devices, had a different idea. He suggested using hello to begin conversations over the phone. Edison even wrote to a friend, saying that “hello” should be the official telephone greeting because it was clear and easy to hear.
Since Edison’s telephones became more widespread in the U.S., hello eventually won over ahoy. By the late 1800s, telephone exchanges had operators greeting callers with “hello,” and the habit stuck.
The impact of “hello” on language
Once people started using “hello” on the phone, it quickly became the go-to greeting in everyday life. Before that, English speakers were more likely to greet each other with phrases like:
- “Good morrow” (an older form of saying “good morning”)
- “Good day” (formal and polite)
- “How do you do?” (a standard introduction among gentlemen)
- “Well met” (a polite greeting upon meeting someone)
- “Hail” (yes, really – though it was more common in earlier centuries)
The telephone made hello so popular that it replaced many of these greetings. Today, it’s nearly impossible to imagine answering the phone with anything else.
Final thought: what if Bell had won?
Just picture a world where ahoy had won the telephone battle. Instead of saying hello to start a call, we’d all be greeting each other like sailors! Maybe “hello” would have remained an exclamation instead of the universal greeting it is today.
So, next time you pick up the phone, remember – you’re following in the footsteps of Edison, not Bell. And if you ever want to shake things up, try answering with ahoy!