{"id":6581,"date":"2011-10-23T02:20:01","date_gmt":"2011-10-23T09:20:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=6581"},"modified":"2014-01-24T02:14:06","modified_gmt":"2014-01-24T10:14:06","slug":"saying-ahoy-hoy-was-at-one-time-the-preferred-way-to-answer-the-phone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2011\/10\/saying-ahoy-hoy-was-at-one-time-the-preferred-way-to-answer-the-phone\/","title":{"rendered":"Saying ‘Ahoy-Hoy’ was at One Time the Preferred Way to Answer the Phone"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Today I found out<\/a> saying “ahoy-hoy” was at one time the preferred way to answer the phone.<\/p>\n

The very brief popularity of this telephone greeting stemmed from the fact the “ahoy-hoy” was Alexander Graham Bell’s preferred way to answer the phone.\u00a0 Ahoy-hoy derives from the term “ahoy”, which is generally associated with being a nautical term used for hailing ships.\u00a0 However, there is also significant evidence that it was popularly used as a way to more or less say “hello” in non-nautical situations.\u00a0 Further, “hoy” was commonly used as far back as the 14th century as a call to use while driving cattle.\u00a0 This precedes the first known instance of it being used in the nautical sense, attached with a leading ‘a’ sound (“a-hoy”).<\/p>\n

The exact origins of the word “ahoy” aren’t known beyond that it stems from this Middle English exclamation, “hoy!”\u00a0 The most popular theory as to the origin of “hoy” is that it derives from the Dutch word “hoi”, meaning “hello”.\u00a0 An alternate widely accepted theory states that it came from the Czech word “Ahoj”, also meaning something to the effect of “hello”.\u00a0 Yet another theory, albeit slightly less widely accepted, is that it stems from the Old Norse “heill”, which eventually gave rise to the Middle English “hail” and perhaps “hoy”.<\/p>\n

Whatever the case, “Ahoy-hoy” quickly got beat out in the U.S. and many other English speaking countries by “hello”, which was Thomas Edison’s favorite thing to say when answering the phone.\u00a0 The invention of the word hello is often credited to Thomas Edison, including on the popular BBC show QI (Quite Interesting), which is normally an exceptionally accurate program (and which is unfortunately not aired in the United States).\u00a0 In this case, though, QI got one wrong when they stated Edison invented the word “hello”.<\/p>\n

In fact, the first documented case of the word “hello” being used as a greeting predates Thomas Edison, appearing in The Sketches and Eccentricities of Col. Davey Crockett<\/em>, which was written in 1833, about 14 years before Edison was born.\u00a0 The exact quote from the text is: “Said I, ‘Hello stranger! if you don’t take keer your boat will run away with you.'”\u00a0 Further, based on significant literary evidence, it would seem that by around the 1860s, “hello” had become an extremely popular greeting. This popularity also predates the invention of the commercially viable telephone device.\u00a0 In addition to that, it predates the first known instance of Edison writing the word “hello”, which was in a letter he wrote in 1877 to the president of the Central District and Printing Telegraph Company of Pittsburgh, where he suggested that using “hello” was the best way to start a telephone conversation.<\/p>\n

Similar to Graham Bell’s reason for liking “ahoy hoy”, Edison liked “hello” as a telephone greeting because it was easily heard and distinguished from other words, even over long distance transmissions (for the time).\u00a0 As Edison stated, “hello” could be heard clearly on a transmission “ten to twenty feet away”.\u00a0 Edison originally tested this using a prototype of Graham Bell’s telephone system.<\/p>\n

The word “hello” also has somewhat obscure origins, though many etymologists think it came from the English “hullo” or “hallo”, which derive from “hollo”, which was an exclamation to draw attention to something.\u00a0 This word, in turn, is thought to derive from “holla”, which meant “stop or cease”.\u00a0 Another slightly less popular theory is that “hello” ultimately derives from the Old English “h\u00e1l b\u00e9o \u00feu”, meaning “Hale be thou”, which was more or less just a way to wish someone good health.<\/p>\n

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