Sp. Hola ‘Hello’ Revisited: Etymological and Historical Insights

The present article outlines the historical roots of Spanish interjection hola and the linguistic stages it has gone through, from an ancient Arabic oath formula, wa'llah ‘I swear to God’, to its current value as a greeting. Firstly, we offer a brief theoretical overview of the laicization of foreign sacred words once they are borrowed by a population of a different religious persuasion. Afterwards, our argumentation entails a comprehensive review of the etymological hypotheses that have been proposed for this word since the 17th century. We are thus able to prove that hola is related to other Romance interjections, Sp. hala ‘oh’, ‘come on’, Rom. aoleu ‘oh, woe’, and văleu ‘id.’, all derived from the name Allah. Hola must have been used in Spanish initially to express astonishment, later with conative or vocative function, until it was finally lexicalized as a salutation.