This greeting is much newer than most people think. The use of hello as a greeting is only as old as the telephone. The first recorded use is from 1883.

　　It does, however, have earlier origins in other senses. It is a variant of hallo, which dates to 1840 and is a cry of surprise. That in turn is related to halloo, a cry to urge on hunting dogs. Halloo dates to about 1700, but a variant, aloo, appears in Shakespeare's King Lear a century earlier than that.

　　And there is an even earlier variant, hollo, which dates to at least 1588 when Shakespeare used it in Titus Andronicus. There are also cognates in other Germanic languages.

　　Hello was not a shoo-in for the telephone greeting either. It competed with several other options, including Alexander Graham Bell's suggestion of Ahoy, but pulled into an early lead and by the end of the 1880s was firmly ensconced.

　　译：

　　Hello 这个问候的历史比大多数人想象的都要短，它只与电话问世的时间差不多，早出现在1883年。

　　但是，它的起源的确还要更早一些，其前身是hallo，可追溯至1840年，那时意为因受惊而发出的叫喊声。而hallo则又与halloo有联系，Halloo乃指敦促猎狗时的叫声，其历史又可上溯至1700年。但是，在更早的一个世纪之前，莎士比亚所著的《李尔王》(King Lear)中就已经出现了另一个变形词aloo。

　　更早的变形词还有hollo，早在1588年莎士比亚就在《泰特斯阿多洛力克斯》(Titus Andronicus)中提及，在日耳曼语言中还有其它的同源词。

　　Hello 也并非打电话时的唯一问候用语，同时还有其它的几种说法，包括亚历山大格拉赫姆贝尔(Alexander Graham Bell)所提议的“喂” (Ahoy)。但是Hello被使用得较多，到了十九世纪八十年代末期，其用法得以固定。