Why do we Greet with Hello,its History and Myth

hel·lo  (h-l, h-) interj. Used to greet someone, answer the telephone, or express surprise. n. pl. hel·los A calling or greeting of "hello." intr.v. hel·loed, hel·lo·ing, hel·loes To call "hello." [Alteration of hallo, alteration of obsolete holla, stop!, perhaps from Old French hola : ho, ho! + la, there (from Latin illc, that way).]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

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hello (hɛˈləʊ; hə-; ˈhɛləʊ) , hallo or hullo

sentence substitute

1. an expression of greeting used on meeting a person or at the start of a telephone call

2. a call used to attract attention

3. an expression of surprise

4. an expression used to indicate that the speaker thinks his or her listener is naive or slow to realize something: Hello? Have you beenon Mars for the past two weeks or something?.

n, pl -los

5. the act of saying or calling "hello"

[C19: see hallo]

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003

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hel•lo (hɛˈloʊ, hə-, ˈhɛl oʊ) 

interj., n., pl. -los, interj.

1. (used to express a greeting, answer a telephone, or attract attention.)

2. (used as an exclamation of surprise, wonder, etc.)

3. (used derisively to question the comprehension, intelligence, or common sense of the person being addressed.)

n.

4. an act or instance of saying “hello”; greeting.

v.i.

5. to say or shout “hello.”

v.t.

6. to say “hello” to.

Also, esp. Brit., hullo.

[1850–55, Amer.; variant of hallo]

Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.

Thesaurus Legend:  Synonyms 

Noun

1.

hello - an expression of greeting; "every morning they exchanged polite hellos" hi, howdy, hullo, how-do-you-do greeting, salutation - (usually plural) an acknowledgment or expression of good will(especially on meeting)

Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2012 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.

credit/source: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/hello

History of Hello

A (Shockingly) Short History Of 'Hello'

What do you say when you pick up the phone?
You say "hello," of course.
What do you say when someone introduces a friend, a relative, anybody at all?
You say "hello."
Hello has to have been the standard English language greeting since English people began greeting, no?

Well, here's a surprise from Ammon Shea, author of The First Telephone Book: Hello is a new word.

The Oxford English Dictionary says the first published use of "hello" goes back only to 1827. And it wasn't mainly a greeting back then. Ammon says people in the 1830's said hello to attract attention ("Hello, what do you think you're doing?"), or to express surprise ("Hello, what have we here?"). Hello didn't become "hi" until the telephone arrived.

The dictionary says it was Thomas Edison who put hello into common usage. He urged the people who used his phone to say "hello" when answering. His rival, Alexander Graham Bell, thought the better word was "ahoy."

Ahoy?

"Ahoy," it turns out, had been around longer — at least 100 years longer — than hello. It too was a greeting, albeit a nautical one, derived from the Dutch "hoi," meaning "hello." Bell felt so strongly about "ahoy" he used it for the rest of his life.

And so, by the way, does the entirely fictional "Monty" Burns, evil owner of the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant on The Simpsons. If you watch the program, you may have noticed that Mr. Burns regularly answers his phone "Ahoy-hoy," a coinage the Urban Dictionary says is properly used "to greet or get the attention of small sloop-rigged coasting ship." Mr. Burns, apparently, wasn't told.

Why did hello succeed? Aamon points to the telephone book. The first phone books included authoritative How To sections on their first pages and "hello" was frequently the officially sanctioned greeting.

In fact, the first phone book ever published, by the District Telephone Company of New Haven, Connecticut, in 1878 (with 50 subscribers listed) told users to begin their conversations with "a firm and cheery 'hulloa.'" (I'm guessing the extra "a" is silent.)

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Whatever the reason, hello pushed past ahoy and never looked back. The same cannot be said of the phonebook's recommended Way To End A Phone Conversation. The phonebook recommended: "That is all."

Says Ammon Shea:

This strikes me as an eminently more honest and forthright way to end a phone call than "good-bye." "Good-bye," "bye-bye," and all the other variants are ultimately contractions of the phrase "God Be with you" (or "with ye"). I don't know about you, but I don't really mean to say that when I end a conversation. I suppose I could say "ciao" — which does have a certain etymological background of coming from the Italianschiavo, which means "I am your slave," and I don't much want to say that either...

The more Ammon thought about it, the more he liked "That is all."

...For several decades the great newscaster Walter Cronkite would end his broadcasts by saying "And that's the way it is," a fine turn of phrase that has almost as much pith and truth to it as "That is all." Broadcast journalist Linda Ellerbee had a similar method of ending her news segments, with the trenchant "And so it goes." These are perfectly serviceable phrases, but even they don't have the clarity and utility of "That is all." I should like to see "That is all" make a comeback in colloquial speech, and I have resolved to attempt to adopt it in the few telephone conversations that I engage in.

Well, this probably wasn't fair or even nice, but I decided to call Ammon Shea to see if he practices what he preaches. He answered his phone with a very standard "hello" and then, after I'd gotten permission to quote from his book, when it was time to end our conversation, I gave him no hint, no encouragement, I just waited to see how it would go...hoping to hear him do his "That is all." But no...

He said, "bye."

All illustrations by Adam Cole /NPR

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/02/17/133785829/a-shockingly-short-history-of-hello

credit/source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich

Truth or Myth on Margaret Hello

 Bell's girlfriend on 1873 is Mabel Hubbard which he marries on 1877. The telephone was patented in 1876. BTW Mabel Hubbard is deaf. His father-in-law is one of the two financial backers for his invention. 
credit/souece: http://www.answers.com/Q/Is_margaret_hello_grahambell%27s_girlfriend

My Note; Therefore I conclude it was impossible for Alexander Graham Bell to give tribute to Margret Hello of  his invention because of the date existence of telephone and his marriage. More so, Margaret Hello did not exist during that time not had met Bell no documents had been presented. 

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