People didn’t always say “hello” when they answered the phone When the first regular phone service was established in 1878, people said “ahoy.”
Actually, the story I heard is this: When the telephone was first coming into use, there was some popular disagreement about the proper thing to say when answering. Bell (inventor of the telephone) was consulted, and, being a Scot, suggested, "Hoy, hoy." (Brits who drop their aitches say "Oi," we say "hey" - same word, same meaning, different accents.) Bell is said to have answered his phone that way, but it never really caught on.
So is the Scots "hoy" the source of "ahoy," or did "ahoy" derive from some other expression?
