DA
Alexander Graham Bell originally suggested 'ahoy' be adopted as the standard greeting when answering a telephone, before 'hello' (suggested by Thomas Edison) became common.
Theories of origin
In Czech Republic and Slovakia (former Czechoslovakia), ahoj (pronounced [aɦɔj], About this soundahoj (help·info)) is an everyday greeting. The following are folk explanations [53] for why ahoj is used in this part of Central Europe:
Czech sailors had brought it with them from Hamburg. The haulage company ČSPLO, in German Tschechoslowakische Elbe/Oder-Schifffahrt[54] operated in the lot of Moldauhafen in Hamburg. which had been leased to Czechoslovakia in 1929, as a hub for freighters, which included the barracks ship Praha.
When Czech sailors' shore leave ended at the Czech industrial harbours of Vltava and the upper part of Labe, as a way of saying goodbye, Czech prostitutes from bars in the harbour warned their customers of their occupational disease syphilis with the wordplay "A hoj! Kdo nehojil, tomu upad" - "And heal (hoj, pronounced ɦɔj, is an imperativ of the verb hojit - to heal, cure). So in English it means literally "Cure it, as whoever does not cure it, he will have his member fallen off."[citation needed]
Czechoslovak Merchant Navy sailors with their high sea ships had brought the word with them when they went home for summer.
After having travelled to America in the 18th century the evangelical Moravian Church, which originated in Bohemia and Moravia, passed on this nautical knowledge, even the shout, to those from their former homeland.
