evidence: While there certainly exist words that began their linguistic lives as people's names, hello does not belong in that category. This sorry tale about the surname of Alexander Graham Bell's girlfriend is merely a hoax, nothing more. We began seeing this purported etymology for hello in the online world in November 2010. Iterations of this leg-pull have subsequently rechristened the inventor of the telephone "Graham Bell" and "graham-bell" (with one version also claiming "His first 2 instruments were at his and her place ... and the first call he made to commercially test the phones was to his girlfriend!") [...] As for that first call, or any other by Graham, being made to the "Margaret Hello" identified in this tall tale as "his girlfriend," such would have stood as rather interesting personal news to those who knew him, because in 1876 Bell was engaged to Mabel Hubbard, a woman whom he married the following year and who remained his wife until his death in 1922. By December 2016, the tale graduated to meme form; the image of Bell with the purported "Margaret Hello" was in fact a photograph of the inventor and Hubbard.