When I answer the phone, I usually say, “hello?” I think most people do. We really don’t think about it, it’s just instinctive… hello is just “what you say” when you answer the phone. Why is that? Well, it turns out that the guy that invented the telephone suggested answering the phone with — not hello — but “ahoy.”
Now this seems like a pretty benign subject…but just like about everything these days, the subject contains rumors and hoaxes. One answers the phone and says, “hello.” Why hello? Well, here’s the story making the rounds. Hello was used because hello was the name of Alexander Graham Bell’s girlfriend. Margaret Hello was the first person with whom Bell conversed on his newly invented phone. Sounds far-fetched, romantic, or maybe stupid, but I guess it would be nice to honor your girlfriend by using her name as a greeting. Of course there are a few issues with this story. One — do you usually call your girlfriend by their last name? Another problem with the story is that Bell didn’t have a girlfriend — he was already married when he invented the telephone. His wife’s name was Mabel Gardiner Hubbard (she took the name Mabel Bell after marriage.) And — she wouldn’t have been conversing on the phone with her husband, because she was deaf since childhood.
At the time Bell invented the telephone, the term hello was being used as a word to garner attention — such as, “Hello, what are you doing?” Or “Hello, who is there?” Hello wasn’t used as a greeting at all. People just didn’t use hello as a greeting — that would have been considered rude. They used the traditional Good Morning, Good Day, or Good Evening. When Bell used the phone, he preferred to use “Ahoy,” which is basically a nautical greeting.
Thomas Edison gets the credit for the use of hello when answering the phone. Edison offered and used “hello” as a standard greeting when using the telephone. He actually suggested the term because there was a need for a greeting that allowed a person to get the attention of the person on the other end of the line. At the time, telephones were an open line, which meant that phones were always connected, one just had to pick up the instrument and start talking.
Bell’s “hello” won out, over “ahoy,” as the accepted greeting when answering the phone. So today, we don’t have to” talk like a pirate” every time we pick up the phone… you can thank Thomas Edison for that.
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