Wagnabbit: Telephone talk: How ‘hello’ came into our vocabulary

Zany and baffling lyrics from The Beatles song “Hello, Goodbye” (1967) were written by Paul McCartney as “a playful exercise” using opposites (high/low, stop/go, left/right, yes/no) “to explore the duality of life and its contrasts.”

You say, “Goodbye” and I say, “Hello, hello, hello”

I don’t know why you say, “Goodbye,” I say, “Hello, hello, hello.”

Writers at Dictionary.com have done the research about the origin of “hello.”

They say: “We use ‘hello’ several times a day to greet people or attract attention. ‘Hello’ is considered a variant on a number of other similar words that were traditionally shouted to gain attention” – including “hallo,” “halloo,” “hola,” “hullo” and “ahoy.”

“We answer the phone with ‘hello.’” Why is that? To begin with, the telephone is a “Northern” invention, emerging from Alexander Graham Bell’s laboratory in Boston in 1876. He wanted people to use the word “ahoy” as a greeting.

That’s a familiar greeting with a nautical heritage.

Bell was born in 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and immigrated in 1870 to Brantford, Ontario, Canada. He moved to Boston the following year and became a U.S. citizen in 1882.

Western Union Telegraph Company hired Bell’s rival, Thomas Alva Edison, to improve Bell’s initial telephone design. Edison responded by inventing the “carbon-button transmitter.”

Edison, a Midwesterner, was born in 1847 in Milan, Ohio (near Sandusky), and raised in Port Huron, Mich. He suggested the word “hello” as an appropriate telephone greeting.

(It caught on…but Alexander Graham Bell continued to say “ahoy” for all his days.)

Robert Louis Krulwich, retired science correspondent for NPR (National Public Radio), said the first telephone directories included authoritative “How To” sections on their first pages, and “hello” was listed frequently as “the officially sanctioned greeting.”

The central telephone exchange operators became known as “hello girls.” The term is attributed to Mark Twain, who used it as a reference to telephone switchboard workers in “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” (1889).

During World War I, the term “hello girls” applied to the 223 U.S. Army Signal Corps female switchboard operators who were deployed to France to serve under Gen. John J. Pershing. These military “hello girls” were essential, replacing the French switchboard operators who spoke no English. Hello?

The once formal face-to-face greeting “how do you do?” didn’t work too well over the telephone.

Over time, it got shortened and deformalized to “howdy do?” and then just “howdy” (an exclamation rather than a question).

Usage of “Howdy” was especially prevalent in the American South, making its way west into Texas after the Civil War.

Vic Tiva, an English fluency trainer based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, said “hello” is the best choice when meeting strangers and in business situations, while “hi” is a more casual and friendly greeting that is appropriate for use in more informal gatherings.

A 1960s survey by the Dictionary of American Regional English found “hey” used as a standard greeting in the American South, particularly in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.

“Hey” was often preferred over “hi” or “hello” as a warmer, more casual and versatile greeting.

For many years, outside of the South, “hey” was often considered too aggressive or solely for grabbing attention, often resulting in a reprimand from the schoolmarm: “Hay is for horses.”