evidence: First, let’s rid ourselves of myths we may have picked up over the internet. Rumor has it that the standard greeting came about because it was the name of Alexander Graham Bell’s girlfriend at the time of patenting the invention. The story goes that she later married the inventor. Perhaps, this means, his wife’s proper name would be Hello Bell? Others suggest that it was a girlfriend that Bell was honoring when choosing the go-to phrase for answering a call on the telephone. This girlfriend is said to have been named Margaret Hello. Supposedly, a declaration of love is why we say hello when answering the phone. [...] With all of the inventions that were said to be wrongly credited to The Wizard of Menlo Park, who knows if he invented the word? After all, the Oxford English dictionary cites the first printed version of ‘Hello’ with that spelling was fifty years prior in the Norwich Courier of Norwich, Connecticut.