[HN Gopher] The 600-year-old origins of the word 'hello'
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The 600-year-old origins of the word 'hello'
Author : 1659447091
Score : 87 points
Date : 2026-01-17 11:51 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| nephihaha wrote:
| 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.
| GordonS wrote:
| Scotland?
| nephihaha wrote:
| Yes. Aye aye, fit like, chiel?
| GordonS wrote:
| Nae bad, nae bad min!
|
| So, not just Scotland but North East Scotland? (I'm in the
| shire myself, previously Aberdeen)
| technothrasher wrote:
| The first time I was in Scotland (from the US), the folks
| I was there to visit though it would be amusing to send
| me down to the pub below their flat to order dinner for
| us all. Off I went. But after accusing each other of not
| speaking English, I realized there was no way I was going
| to be able to communicate with the guy behind the bar. My
| friends laughed uproariously when I tucked tail and came
| back unsuccessful.
| GordonS wrote:
| Funny thing is, I remember it being as bad in the other
| direction - first few times I went to Texas with work,
| almost everyone seemed to struggle to understand me,
| seemingly no matter how "properly" I tried to speak!
| vidarh wrote:
| I used to work with a woman from Scotland, and relatively
| soon we pretty much came to the understanding that I
| would only understand 1/3 of what she said, but it was
| okay because she just spoke 3 times as much...
| nephihaha wrote:
| I used to live at the other end of Aberdeenshire, right
| out in the countryside. I never get up there now. Not
| even Aberdeen although I plan to visit some time. Haven't
| been in years.
| HPsquared wrote:
| On the nautical theme, Czechs say "Ahoj" (pronounced "ahoy").
| Especially charming because Czechia is landlocked. I have no
| idea how this came about.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I'm still shocked at Mala morska vila too.
| vjerancrnjak wrote:
| If you remove diacritics its completely valid BCS and same
| meaning.
| HPsquared wrote:
| BCS have a word for mermaid/siren though (sirena) so it's
| Mala Sirena. Which makes sense with the sea right there
| and proximity to Greece so Homeric legends about sirens
| will presumably be in the culture.
| vjerancrnjak wrote:
| There's a nice song by Daleka Obala - Morska Vila. That's
| a first ring.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Makes sense. Maybe it's a bit like how informal English
| tends to use Germanic rather than Latin derivations?
| secondcoming wrote:
| I use 'alright?' far more than 'hello'
| nephihaha wrote:
| 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-3 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Interesting read. How we got the word "goodbye" is also a cool
| story.
| Daub wrote:
| 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.
| bloppe wrote:
| 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)
| detourdog wrote:
| 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.
| RestartKernel wrote:
| 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.
| detourdog wrote:
| Could be, this was just my impression.
| kalind wrote:
| 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.
| RestartKernel wrote:
| > The repetition does indeed seem to because of the poor
| quality of the first telephone lines.
|
| I'm pretty sure it's also commonly pronounced "moshi mosh~"
| as a side-effect of this repetition.
| greggsy wrote:
| Interesting. In Australia, people often use erhm or aah/aahm as
| an interjection to announce that they are about to commence
| speaking.
| redwall_hp wrote:
| Japan has that too: ano (ano) and etsuto (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 wrote:
| > Greek, meanwhile, uses "Geia sou" (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 wrote:
| allo
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Russian also uses "Be Healthy!" (in imperative mode, like
| Latin) as a greeting: "Zdravstvuite!" ("Zdravstvuite").
| AstroNutt wrote:
| 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.
| genter wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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)
| genter wrote:
| Forgot about that. So about a 100% chance my dad got it
| from that.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I've heard people in Utah say this as well
| krackers wrote:
| In japanese there is yatsuho (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 "Geia sou" (yah-soo)
| and the supposed root as a ferryman hail (hala). 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~.
| layer8 wrote:
| The Swiss band Yello was named after this (sort of):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yello#History
| chistev wrote:
| What's the origin of "Hello World"?
| petepete wrote:
| Radio DJ William B Williams' on air greeting, apparently.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_B._Williams_(DJ)
| layer8 wrote:
| For programming, the origin is the K&R book _The C Programming
| Language_.
| chromatin wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Probably. They're not very cultured there.
| krustyburger wrote:
| It's for when you're greeting a cute animal.
| hansvm wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| davidw wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| In Bavaria and Austria they say "servus" which literally means
| slave/servant in Latin.
| davidw wrote:
| Yes, when they are not Gruss Gotting.
| alternatetwo wrote:
| My brain tried to insert an o to make that Gottingen.
| psychoslave wrote:
| 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.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Brasilian Portuguese adopted that as their main greeting though
| spelled "tchau".
| romanhn wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| romanhn wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I believe Allo is inherited from french, that was used already
| before edison/phone as interjection.
| vic20forever wrote:
| When I studied in Russia (early 90s, it was still the USSR), we
| learned to answer the phone with slushaiu (I'm listening)
| ivanhoe wrote:
| I'm confused that, speaking of origins, they don't mention at all
| Spanish "hola", having literally the same meaning as hello?
| layer8 wrote:
| > _the lyrical, almost poetic quality of "hola" and "ola",
| favoured by the Romance languages_
| spyrja wrote:
| 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 thu hal!"
| (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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
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