General information Seamen had been using ahoy long before the first recorded use in print in well-known seafaring songs or shanties. There is a lack of research into handwritten letters and records from seamen. Therefore, printed works concerning the use of the "Ahoy"-word family have only restricted significance regarding the temporal and geographical distribution. "Ahoy" represents the original English form and its first maritime use was recorded in 1751 as a new word in nautical language. The first evidence for the German word "ahoi" is found in 1828. Ahoy is widely used in the Northern and Baltic Maritime World. It expresses
semantically a change in distance or presupposes it. In most languages it can be used as an interjection, whilst in others it takes the form of a
verb (e. g. English - "to ahoy", German - "ahoi sagen") One early example of the expression can be found in
William Falconer's Dictionary of the Marine (1780): "The usual expression is, Hoa, the ship ahoay!". In the first edition of this dictionary (1769) the expression was still in its previous form
hoay. In the 1780s
ahoy was already used on the stage in
London to create a sea-faring atmosphere. In this way it reached a very wide audience. In the comedy
The Walloons, brought to the stage in 1782 by the playwright
Richard Cumberland, the expression was used to catch someone's attention: "Ahoy! you Bumboat, bring yourself this way". The work was published posthumously in 1813. In another early documented source, as well,
ahoy was similarly used to catch someone's attention. The expression
ahoy was heard in 1789 in the lyrics of a
sea shanty, a worksong sung by able seamen, when the English composer
Charles Dibdin (1745-1814) performed his musical
The Oddities in London. This work also contains the song
Ben Backstay, about a
boatswain. The song goes: "And none as he so merrily / Could pipe all hands ahoy". The lyrics were not published until 1826. Tobias Smollett c 1770.jpg|
Tobias Smollett used the expression
a hoy for the first time, so far as is known, in 1748 Richard Cumberland playwright.jpg|
Richard Cumberland used the present form
ahoy in 1782 Charles Dibdin by Thomas Phillips.jpg|
Charles Dibdin inserted
ahoy in a song of one of his musicals IMA-Samuel Johnson2.jpg|
Samuel Johnson used the word
ahoy in his writings
Consolidation In the 1799 edition of
Samuel Johnson's dictionary the word "ahoy" (pronounced ) is still missing, but in the 1824 edition it was said "to be almost as important as holla", supported by a quotation from Cumberland in 1813. The first entry in this popular reference book can be seen as an acceptance of "ahoy" into the English language. In the first half of the 19th century the word already began to find its way into many neighbouring languages. A speculation from 1835 about the origin of the French word oyez, which means "hört!" in German, implies an early philological engagement with the word. It had already appeared in a metaphorical context before, when in the American trade town of
Philadelphia a preacher started to build a church for sailors in 1819. According to his memoirs, sailors used to greet him with "Ship ahoi" and to ask where he was going. The preacher used to answer back: "To the
New Jerusalem harbour". We sail under the admiral Jesus, a good captain. We need men: "As the sailors said right before they were taken on: "Now we come in and listen to your conditions"
The variant "ohoy" The variant
ohoy was used early on as a synonym for
ahoy. In one anecdote, printed in 1791, it appears as the ironic greeting of a captain to his boatman who is dressed up like a Romney Marsh Sheep when he entered the stage: "Ohoa, the boatswain, the Romney, Ohoy!" The "boatswain answered "Holloa" and disappeared. The Scottish poet Thomas Campbell published a satirical poem in 1821, in which a rider shouted: "Murderer, stop, ohoy, oh". In 1836 the Scottish novelist Allan Cunningham wrote: "Ohoy, Johnnie Martin! Ohoy, Tom Dempster! be busy my "merry lads, and take me on board". The form "ohoy" has been adopted by several Nordic languages. Their dictionaries give the English
ohoy as a single source word, usually before
ahoy sometimes afterwards.
German, diffusion Research The term remained widely unknown to German readers until 1840s, since the translators of popular maritime literature of the time avoided it. 1843 saw the first German translation of the word å-hoj to "hiaho" from a Swedish novel. The earliest documentation of the term in German language appears not in non-fictional maritime texts but the nautical
prose. In the beginning, the circumstances point to uncertainties regarding the usage of the word. Since the late 1820s, the words ahoy and ahoi marked with the
coda -i, a feature demonstrating Germanization of ahoy, can be found in the German translation of English novels and fictions. Around the same time, the term was used by authors in original German texts on rare occasions. Ahoi became an established term around 1950 as it was used in the works of widely-read authors from the 1940s onward. The term rarely appeared in dictionaries in the 19th century. It is not included in the "
Urduden" dictionary published in 1880.
The Grimm brothers’ Dictionary of German (Deutsches Wörterbuch) did not recognize the word at the time; it did not appear in the first volume, published in 1852, with entries up to the keyword "allverein". The DWB's second edition published in 1998, documents the earliest uses of the term as occurring in 1846 and 1848. In addition, the original index cards for the dictionary, which are kept in the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, do not contain any earlier entries. The standard work "Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache" by
Friedrich Kluge lists ahoi as a separate entry since the 1999 edition. The automatic search for appropriate keywords in digitalized books on the internet and in offline-databanks does only lead to a few useful results. German light fiction was printed so badly in the first half of the 19th century that even today good recognition software still produces a great number of errors, so that records are not found. Research in original catalogues is still necessary for a systematic search.
Early evidence in translation 's novels The earliest creditable use of the word
ahoi dates back to 1828. In 1827 the American story-teller
James Fenimore Cooper published his pirate story
The Red Rover. The following year
der rothe Freibeuter was released in
Frankfurt am Main. The translator Karl Meurer did not translate all of the words. The command "All hands make sail, ahoy!" was translated as "Alle zu Hauf! Die Segel hißt!", but later on in the novel
ahoy was translated as
aho, which could have been a moment of inattention. However, Meurer translated the phrase "All hands to mischief, ahoy!", as a signalled approval of amusement on board and so became "Alle zu Hauf! zu Possen, ahoi!". Meurer also translated the phrase "Good humour, ahoy!" with "Bei den Possen gehalten, ahoi!" In 1830 Cooper used the word
ahoy five times in a story whose title was the same as the name of the ship
Water Witch (German
Wassernixe). A translation by Gottfried Friedenberg was released in the same year and he chose
ahoi four times. Friedenberg missed out the first occurrence of the word
ahoy. It is possible that in 1830 the German word was relatively new. In later editions this mistake was corrected. Friedrich Knickerbocker, who published the second translation in 1831, overlooked or rewrote ahoy also incorrectly as "Holüber!" The "Wer da", or "Who's there?", the phrase he introduced once was not new. In 1824 and 1827 the German editions of Cooper's story
The Pilot were released, in which
ahoi was translated with similar expressions, such as "Wer da!", "Wer da?", "heda" or "He! He!". Not until 1842 in
der Lotse (English, the pilot) ahoy became the standard interjection due to Eduard Mauch's translation, however this contained four
ahoys and one
ahoi. In 1835 and 1836 the anonymous translator of the two-volume story ''Trelawney's Abentheuer in Ostindien
, which was published by sailor and later author Edward John Trelawny in 1832, who kept ahoy'' as a loanword. In 1837 the novel
Lykkens Yndling/Das Glückskind was released in Danish by the author Carl Bernhard, who had also translated it into German. Bernhard was the pseudonym of the Danish novelist Andreas Nikolai de Saint-Aubain. This is probably the earliest import from a Scandinavian language and gave us the phrase "Ahoi, en Sejler" meaning "Ahoi, ein Segler!" (English - ahoy, sailor!).
Early evidence in German source texts The expression
ahoy is documented in a German source text from 1829. In her short story
Die Armenierin, the Saxon writer
Charlotte Eleonore Wilhelmine von Gersdorff inserted this word several times in a specialist context, both as an invocation and to express encouragement. The author also worked as a translator from English. The Austrian writer
Charles Sealsfield first used the word
ahoy in its original form. Sealsfield, who was also known by his real name Carl Anton Postl, lived temporarily in
New Orleans, where he had many contacts with sailors. In his novel
Morton oder die große Tour, which was published for the first time in
Zürich in 1835, a big crowd of excited people in
Piccadilly Circus in
London is summoned with the exclamation "Gare! Gare! take care! Hallo ho! A hoy!". The same exclamation is still to be found in the following editions of 1844 and 1846. In the footnotes to a reprint, the word
Gare was appropriately corrected to
Care, but wrongly used in the text in all three editions. The English form is correctly given, in two words, which was very common at that time. In Sealsfield's novel
Pflanzerleben (Zürich, 1836), the word is used before uttering an order: "Ahoi! Ahoi! (...) Hört ihr nicht? die Pferde dem Herrn Grafen abnehmen.", that is "Ahoi! Ahoi! (...) Don't you hear? Take the Count's horses." An English translation of the book appeared in the United States in 1844, in which the word
ahoi is kept in its German form. Also in his last novel,
Süden und Norden (1843), Sealsfield again used the English spelling, in two words: "Sail a hoy – an ennemys sail!" The translation in a footnote to that page reads: "Kapitän, ein fremdes (feindliches) Segel." In one of Ernst Willkomm stories from 1838, Jan, one of the characters in the story shouts "Ship Ahoy" as loud as a thunder from the cliffs of
Heligoland. This was misprinted as "ship ahni" by the German newspaper
Zeitung für die elegante Welt (English: A Newspaper For the Elegant World)
, in which Willkomm's Lootsenerzählungen (English: Pilot Stories) first appeared. The misspelling was corrected when the story was published in a book in 1842. With its meaning apparently unknown to the publisher, the word reappeared in the same German newspaper in a narrative called
Johann Pol. An Image of life in the west indies by an anonymous author in 1838. The said narrative depicts sailors from all around the world chanting "Ahoi, oi" while loading the ship. The 1844
Politik an einer Wirthstafel by Friedrich Giehne uses the words 'Waitress, Ahoy' in an expression addressed towards a waitress by a character. The story was published in a book which included mostly reissues of materials printed between 1836 and 1843. However, there was no mention of when the said story was first published or whether or not it was actually a reprint. What is interesting is that the word "ahoy" was used on and off the ship. One such example of an off sea usage can be found in Smollet's novel
The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle in 1751 in which commodore Trunnion utters " Ho, the house, Ahoy!". It is likely however, that Giehne might have borrowed the term from Smollet as he could have read an 1840 translation of Smollet's work by Georg Nikolaus Bärmann from English to German. In 1844, The German author
Heinrich Smidt used the term "Ahoy" in parts of a pre-print version of his novel titled
Michael de Ruiter. ''Pictures of Holland's Marine
which was published in 1846 in the Magazine for the Literature from Abroad
of which he was the editor.
The term was also used in another one of his narratives in 1844 titled Hexen-Bootsmann.'' There is no trace of "ahoy" in the recently digitized versions of Smidt's works originally published between 1837 and 1842, however, the term has a continuous presence in all of his works since 1844 until his last novel which was published in 1866. Therefore, it is likely that Smidt added the word to his vocabulary sometime in 1843. Heinrich Smidt by Adolf von Menzel.jpeg| Since 1844, Ahoi often appears in writings by the German sailor and writer
Heinrich Smidt Friedrich Gerstäcker was one of the most successful and popular German authors of adventure novels in the 19th century. As was the case with Smidt who started using Ahoy in 1844, Gerstäcker, who translated a lot from the English, also suddenly used the term in 1847. "Ahoi – ho – ahoi! meine braven Burschen" (English: "Ahoi – ho – ahoi! My well behaved fellows"), is what he writes in the
Mississippi pictures. In 1848 the sentence: "Boot ahoi! schrie da plötzlich der gebundene Steuermann" (English: Ship ahoi! shouted the helmsman suddenly"), appeared in Gerstäcker's novel
Flusspiraten des Mississippi (English: The Pirates of the Mississippi). Friedrich Gerstäcker.jpg|In 1848, Friedrich Gerstäcker popularized
ahoi in his bestseller
Die Flusspiraten des Mississippi (English:The Mississippi River Pirates) The use of ahoi in German Maritime context For
Wilhelm Heine, a world traveler, the cry was "common" in 1859. But Heine was on a voyage with sailors from the United States, who were already using the common English form. For Germans in
Livland on the Baltic Sea the use of
ahoi was explained in a dictionary from 1864: " ahoi [...]. disyllabic, and with stress on the second syllable." In the 19th century it was "all in all rather seldom" used in Germany. About 1910 it was a "modern imitation" of the English
ahoy, which later became an uncommon cry. In non-maritime fields
ahoi is also used to say goodbye. •
Carl Sternheim (1909) als Mitteilung an die Crew: "Eine Stimme vom Mast: Land ahoi!" •
Anna Seghers (1928): "Ein paar Burschen von vorn liefen auf eine Höhe, schrien Ahoi, winkten mit den Armen." •
Hans Fallada (1934) als Warnruf: "Ahoi! Ahoi! Mann über Bord!" •
Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1951): "Ahoi! Die Segel gelichtet [sic!], weg, zu anderen Küsten, zu anderen Bräuten!" •
Günter Grass (1959): "Warum aber Matzerath winkte und solch einen Blödsinn wie ‚Schiff ahoi!‘ brüllte, blieb mir schleierhaft. Denn der verstand als gebürtiger Rheinländer überhaupt nichts von der Marine". •
Hermann Kant (1972): "Da ging dieser Mensch aus dem Haus, sagte ahoi, Franziska, küßte einen auf die Nase, alles wie immer …" •
Ulrich Plenzdorf (1973): "Ahoi! Hast auch schon besser gehustet, no?" The word created a maritime atmosphere in many songs which were composed after the period of the
Tall ships, but without the traditional meaning of
ahoi. In 1934 the song
Wir lagen vor Madagaskar was composed with the first line of the chorus "Ahoi Kameraden". This can be seen as a sailors' song. The
Pop song Schön ist die Liebe im Hafen with the final line of the chorus "Auch nicht mit Fürsten und Grafen / Tauschen wir Jungens, ahoi!" is based on a
waltz, which was also composed in 1934. The
Edelweiss Pirates probably adopted
ahoi from Czech teenagers and used it as a greeting even after the group was banned in 1933. It was also used by
Rammstein as a bridge on the 2003 song
Reise, Reise from the album with the same name. The song has a nautical theme about fishermen. Adolf Friedrich Erdmann von Menzel 042.jpg|
Paul Heyse used
ahoi in 1900 to challenge the elements Friedrich duerrenmatt 19890427.jpg|
Friedrich Dürrenmatt deemed
ahoi fit for a radio play in 1951 GGrass.jpg|
Günter Grass wrote
ahoi ironically to caricature a landlubbing character in 1959 Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1982-0104-304, Berlin, Hermann Kant.jpg|
Hermann Kant used
ahoi in 1972 as a parting phrase
Watersport s
Narrenschiff (Ship of Fools) (1495). In carnival parades the crew of a ship of fools greets the audience with ahoy! People who sail as a hobby adopted ahoi from those who sail as a living. From 1884 to 1887 the publication
Ahoi! initially appeared as
Zeitschrift für deutsche Segler (Magazine for German sailors), later as
Zeitschrift für den Wassersport (Magazine for Watersport)
. In 1892 the Berlin sailing club Ahoi was founded. There's evidence of ahoi as a "sailor's call" in the area of
Lake Constance in the 1920s. With the watersport's increasing popularity it came back into existence in the 1960s. Since then
ahoi is also used as a formal greeting to officials on board, e.g. "Käptn ahoi!", or without an additional element. The use is considered by professionals unseamenlike and you should completely avoid the cry ("ahoi!"). Its use is severely marked down on board and can destroy the whole level of newly formed, hard-earned trust. This already dying word has been revamped by lyricists once more. A rubber dinghy shipyard distributed from 1964 to 1992 their customer magazine Wiking ahoi (Viking ahoy).
Carnival Ahoi, alongside
helau and
alaaf, is a word used to make a fool of somebody during the
Carnival period. After
sailors,
stevedores and inland fishermen adopted the expression from the coast, it was made popular by the Carnival societies. During the parades, the crews of the
Ships of fools greet the people on the roadside with
Ahoi!, and they return the same greeting. It was also traditionally used in the former territory of the
Palatinate, in
Mannheim as "Monnem ahoi" or "Mannem ahoi!" and in
Ludwigshafen, but also in bordering areas like northern
Baden Altlußheim, as well as in southern
Thuringian
Wasungen, as "Woesinge ahoi!". The Carnival society Milka, foundend in 1908 in
Upper Swabian
Ravensburg, shouts the greeting "Milka - ahoi!". During the Backfischfest of the fishermen's guild in
Worms, the greeting "ahoi" is employed as well. Also newer Carnival groups, for example one northern German association, and a new group in
Cologne, refer to this call.
Military In the German and Austrian
Marines, before
World War I, the boats which approached a
warship lain at anchor were called using the expression "Boot ahoi!", in order to find out who was on board. The answers from the warships depended on the most senior person on board: "Standarte!" was the reply if the boat was approaching with a royal on board; "Flagge!" with an
Admiral; "Ja, ja!" with an
Officer and "Nein, nein!" without any official. It worked in a similar way with "boat ahoy" in the
U.S. Navy, where the procedure was established for the first time in 1893, and in the
Royal Navy. In the
German Navy the greeting "Ahoi" is no longer used. In its place the Northern German term "
Moin" is used. Amongst the German warships between 1815 and 1945 only one
motorboat of the
Kriegsmarine was called
Ahoi. It was adopted in 1940, so it probably already had that name, and it drove on the
Kaiser-Wilhelm Canal. In June 1945 the former owner, J. Pieper & Co., took possession of it again. The catapult ship
Bussard, on duty in 1942, was sold in 1947 as USA
spoils of war to the Belgian shipping company Heygen in
Ghent, and renamed
Ahoy. From 1940 to 1943 the
Phänomen-Werke Gustav Hiller company manufactured 125cc motor scooters for the German
Wehrmacht in
Zittau, under the name
Phänomen Ahoi. "Nebel - ahoi!" is used by the ABC-Abwehrtruppe, a defence division of the
Bundeswehr, and it belongs officially to the military tradition of the army. The expression originated among the Nebeltruppe, a Wehrmacht brigade group from 1935, whose job it was to create a chemical fog over a battlefield before destroying the target areas with mass fire. The expression originated in a moment of euphoria, after the fog successfully covered its target.
Candy Ahoj is the name of a
Sherbet brand developed in
Stuttgart in 1925. Named after the term
ahoi it has been advertised with the picture of a sailor and a flag since 1930. At this point there was a fashion for
Sailor Suits for children. In the USA term is used for the popular cookie brand
Chips Ahoy! produced by
Nabisco, a play on the term "ships ahoy!".
Cattle drive In one particular case
Åhoi is used as an instruction to the cattle to slow down. It was found before
World War I in the
Ore Mountains and it was used in the same way as
eha and
oha, ooha(a). It is possible that this is a combination of two interjections, as in
Middle English, though
eha might come from the typical Ore Mountain form
eh "ein, inne", as
ee halten "an-, ein-, innehalten". The new standard dictionary for this language area lacks an entry for
åhoi, ahoi or
oho. In a valley in the
Slovenian
Triglav area shepherds use the call
Ohoi! to communicate over long distances, according to a report from 1838.
Dutch Theories of origin If the origin of
ahoi is rooted in Dutch, then
hoy originates from
hoie, which is the name of a sailorboat that today is known as a
Hoie or
Heude. This common type of boat was used to transport passengers and cargo along the coast of the
North Sea and across the
English Channel. In a letter from 1495 "an Hoye of Dorderyght" from the Dutch trading town
Dordrecht is mentioned. Then, two years later the term "an hoye of Andwarpe" appears in documents belonging the English
King Henry VII. In his travel accounts from 1624
John Smith, who tended to exaggerate, counts an enormous number of sails in the region between
Vlissingen and the
Sea of IJsselin: "Holland and Zeeland hath twenty thousand saile of Ships and Hoies." However, there is a lack of direct evidence that links the origin of
ahoi to the particle
a and the noun
hoie. In Dutch linguistics the call is thought to be an adaption from English. This is indicated by the amount of evidence found in English and the lack thereof in Dutch, as well as criticism of the idea that in the
Early Modern Period a word could be formed from a simple expression for a ship. The relation of
ahoi and
hoi, which is a common form of address in Dutch, is unclear.
Hoi, which had been proven to be an exclamation of joy as early as 1552, could also be a short form of
ahoi or
ahoi could be an extension of
hoi. Most likely
hoi belongs to a group of calls such as
hó and
hé and is not closely related to
ahoi at all.
Sources Aho(o)i, ahoy and
ehoi are rather uncommon in Dutch and are not included in numerous specialist dictionaries. This could be due to the prevalence of the similar and shorter exclamation
hoi. The sources for earlier uses of the term are lacking, because
ahoi did not get its own lemma in the
Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal (WNT), even though this comprehensive dictionary includes interjections. In addition later editions of the
WNT from recent decades lack this entry. The earliest entries of forms of
ahoi in the
WNT can be found around 1900. The author
Tine van Berken wrote "A-hoi! A-hoi! riep Beer onvermoeid, de hand trechters gewijze aan de mond", which roughly translates as "A-hoi! A-hoi! called Beer relentlessly...", in a book for girls that was published in 1897. In 1908 author George Frans Haspels wrote "met donderend ahoei", "with thundering ahoy", referring to the forces of a storm that hit the coast. Here the meaning was extended to refer to noise. If Haspel was alluding to the sound of the wind, the spelling
ahoei, which is pronounced [a ˈhuːi], contains an onomatopoeic element. In the 1950s
ahoi was considered outdated. However, the expression was still generally known. Evidence for the use of
ahoy in Friesian are lacking in comprehensive dictionaries of that language.
Ahoy in Rotterdam Ahoy also refers to the short form of the
Rotterdam Ahoy, a big conference center in the
Netherlands. It originally consisted of only one hall that was used for the exhibition
Rotterdam Ahoy! in the 1950s. The exhibition was held as part of the reconstruction of the city after the war and was originally called
Ahoy’, the additional accent is intended to remind the reader of the exclamation mark in the name of the exhibition. In 1968 it was moved to the district of
Charlois and developed into an extensive complex of buildings over the years. Charlois is the place of origin of the
Tamboer- en Trompetterkorps Ahoy, the
Tambour- and Trumpetcorps Ahoy, founded in 1955. We do not know whether it was called this because the term
ahoy expressed the sense of reconstruction in
Rotterdam at the time and was already outdated in a maritime context. The marching band first performed on the
Koninginnedag (Queens' Day) in 1956 and became more popularly known because of their innovative formations, their previously uncommon antiphonal singing and faster marching music. In 1962 they won first prize at the Wereld Muziek Concours in
Kerkrade and later played at the
Sanremo Music Festival. The group split up in 2003 because of a lack of successors. The
Show-Musikkorps Ahoy-Hamburg was founded in
Hamburg in 1975.
Scandinavian languages Forms Scandinavian languages have adopted derivatives of the English form
ahoy and
ohoy in various different spellings. In Danish it is
ahoj and
ohoj, also
ohøj,
aahøj oder
ohej, in Norwegian
ohoi, in Swedish
ohoj and
å-hoj. In Icelandic
ohoj can be combined with the English word
ship; which takes the form
Sjipp og hoj (Ship ahoy). This is also used in Norwegian, as
Skip ohoi. In at least Swedish, there have been some interchange with
åhej! (heave-ho!).
Early evidence In 1837 the Danish novelist Andreas Nikolai de Saint-Aubain, who published under the pseudonym Carl Bernhard, used the phrase "‚Ahoi, en Sejler!‘ raabte Matrosen fra Mærset". In the same year Saint-Aubin's German translation "‚Ahoi, ein Segler!‘, rief der Matrose vom Mers", is an example of early evidence in the German-speaking world. The Swedish author
Emilie Flygare-Carlén wrote in 1842: "Örnungen reddes till en ny färd på den klarnade böljan; manskabet skrek sitt muntra ‚å-hoj!‘" The German translator of 1843 avoided the use of
å-hoj and formulated it as such: "The young eagle was prepared for a new journey through the clear waves; the crew let out its cheerful shout of Hiaho." In the English translation of 1844 it was however, "The crew of the young Eagle […] shouted their cheerful ahoys." In 1846 Flygare-Carlén wrote "Båt, ohoj – hvarifrån, hvathän?", English "Ship, ahoy - where from, where to?" But in English-Danish dictionaries from 1863,
ahoy is given as "Hey! Holla!" und "holla! heida!"
Finnish and Estonian In
Finnish the interjection is derived from the Swedish
ohoj and becomes
ohoi. In a German-Finnish dictionary
ahoi (German) is written as
hoi (Finnish). A translation from either
Low German or English
ahoy into the related language of
Estonian is pronounced and spelt
ahoi.
Czech and Slovak Theories of origin In
Czech Republic and
Slovakia (former
Czechoslovakia),
ahoj (pronounced [aɦɔj], ) is an everyday greeting. The following are folk explanations 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 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." • 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. The international call which is sometimes accredited to a Bohemian sailor in the 17th century has since been proven to be wrong. However the Czech Language Institute rejects all of the above, stating that it was first referred to in an 1888 (spelt Ahoi as in German) as a greeting used by sailors, and that by the time of a 1935 dictionary the use had spread from sailors to boaters and scouts (see also the German section for the boaters' magazine titled "Ahoi").
nazdar, ahoj, čau The spread of
ahoj mainly dates back to the 1920s, when Czech adolescents and students populised canoeing on the South Moravian and Bohemian rivers. The canoers formed a type of movement called
Wandervogel, some called themselves
trampové,
Tramps, or
skauti,
Scouts. As early as the 1930s Czech linguists believed the
skauti as the carriers and distributors of the word
ahoj. These groups formed a romantic opposition against the nationalistic Czech middle-class*. The
Czech Sokol movement with its preference for traditional gymnastics did not fit the adolenscent's spirit of optimism and progress, which cultivated an internationally and trendily* perceived sport with its own greeting. They positioned their form of
ahoj from sailors, which possibly coming from the lower parts of Germany, against Sokol's
nazdar, Czech for
hail.
Nazdar was used in general across the Czech and Czechoslovak society, but within a few decades, the modern-day
ahoj replaced this old-fashioned expression. The Czech and Slovak ironic love of language contributed to the distribution of
ahoj. In Slovakia
ahoj-derivates are used in variety of different scenarios, such as the
diminutive "ahojček", as a toast "ahojka", to a greater extent the plural-form "ahojte", as well as the grammatically correct we-form "ahojme sa". In Czech as well as in Slovak
ahoj is being slowly replaced by the modern-day form "čau", which comes from the Italian greeting
ciao. This has been perceived to be the case since the Czechoslovak government allowed the Italian films to be shown in the 1960s.
Usage in youth culture The daily newspaper
České slovo (English - Czech Word), which belongs to the publishing company Melantrich in Prague, called a humorous supplement
Ahoj na neděli (English - Ahoy on Sunday), which appeared between 1933 and 1943. It was distributed on every Friday, "in order to provide the tramps in time with their weekend lecture." From 1969 until 1997 the leisure supplement
Ahoj na sobotu (English - Ahoy on Saturday) appeared in
České slovo's successor
Svobodné slovo (English - Free Word)
. Ahoj is the official name of a district in
Nové Mesto which is a part of the Slovak capital city
Bratislava. Adolescents met there before the Second World War, when the region was barely built. The car manufacturer
Skoda called its prototype for a city car
Škoda Ahoj! in 2001.
The Simpsons character
Mr. Burns uses the term ahoy-hoy as a greeting while Australian comedian duo
Hamish and Andy has used the term ahoy as the shows preferred greeting after finding out Graham-Bell wanted the term to be used following the invention of the telephone.
Teasing usage in Theresienstadt In
Theresienstadt concentration camp Czech-speaking Jews called jokingly non-believing inmates, who had assimilated to the Czech society,
Ahojista, (English - "ahoy-ers"). A Jewish Czech who had assimilated and posed opportunistically as a
Zionist for the camp's Jewish administration centre, was called
Šahojista, which was composed of the greetings
Schalom and
Ahoj.
Acronyms When Czechia and Slovakia, called the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, was occupied by Germany in the 1930s, ahoj could be understood as an acronym for the watchword "Adolfa Hitlera oběsíme jistě", English - "We'll hang Adolf Hitler for sure." Under the communist government ahoj developed into an acronym in the Slovak part of the country. Since the struggle between the Church and the State from 1950 it was used as an acronym to console people in hardship
Aj hriešnych ochraňuje Ježiš, English
Jesus also protects the sinners, or for the Latin
ad honorem Jesu, English
For the glory of Jesus. Demonstratively catholic adolescents use it amongst themselves. Even priests used it to address the congregation from the pulpit. ==References==