Hello Kitty

Hello Kitty (Japanese: ハロー・キティ, Hepburn: Harō Kiti), (full name: Kitty White (キティ・ホワイト, Kiti Howaito)) is a fictional character produced by the Japanese company Sanrio, created by Yuko Shimizu and currently designed by Yuko Yamaguchi. She is depicted as an anthropomorphic white Japanese Bobtail cat with a red bow.

Shortly after her creation in 1974, Hello Kitty greeted the world with a "Hello!" on her very first product. The Hello Kitty vinyl coin purse was introduced by Sanrio in March 1975. The character was then brought to the United States in 1976. The character is a staple of the kawaii segment of Japanese popular culture. By 2010, Sanrio had groomed Hello Kitty into a global marketing phenomenon worth $5 billion a year. By 2014, when Hello Kitty was 40 years old, she was worth about $7 billion a year, all without advertising except on Sanrio's, related show producers', and ticket sales' webpages and at show venues and nearby locations.

Originally aimed at pre-adolescent females, Hello Kitty's market has broadened to include adult consumers. She can be found on a variety of products ranging from school supplies to fashion accessories and high-end consumer products. Including various diamond necklaces. Several Hello Kitty TV series, targeted towards young children, have been produced. Hello Kitty is also the main character at the two Japanese Sanrio theme parks, Harmonyland and the indoor Sanrio Puroland.

Tokyo

Tokyo (東京, Tōkyō, "Eastern Capital") (Japanese: [toːkjoː], English /ˈtoʊki.oʊ/), officially Tokyo Metropolis (東京都, Tōkyō-to), is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan, and is both the capital and largest city of Japan. The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world. It is the seat of the Emperor of Japan and the Japanese government. Tokyo is in the Kantō region on the southeastern side of the main island Honshu and includes the Izu Islands and Ogasawara Islands. Formerly known as Edo, it has been the de facto seat of government since 1603 when Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu made the city his headquarters. It officially became the capital after Emperor Meiji moved his seat to the city from the old capital of Kyoto in 1868; at that time Edo was renamed Tokyo. Tokyo Metropolis was formed in 1943 from the merger of the former Tokyo Prefecture (東京府, Tōkyō-fu) and the city of Tokyo (東京市, Tōkyō-shi).

Hello

Hello is a salutation or greeting in the English language. It is first attested in writing from 1833.

First use

Hello, with that spelling, was used in publications as early as 1833. These include an 1833 American book called The Sketches and Eccentricities of Col. David Crockett, of West Tennessee, which was reprinted that same year in The London Literary Gazette.

The word was extensively used in literature by the 1860s.

Etymology

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, hello is an alteration of hallo, hollo, which came from Old High German "halâ, holâ, emphatic imperative of halôn, holôn to fetch, used especially in hailing a ferryman." It also connects the development of hello to the influence of an earlier form, holla, whose origin is in the French holà (roughly, 'whoa there!', from French là 'there'). As in addition to hello, halloo,hallo, hollo, hullo and (rarely) hillo also exist as variants or related words, the word can be spelt using any of all five vowels.

Telephone

The use of hello as a telephone greeting has been credited to Thomas Edison; according to one source, he expressed his surprise with a misheard Hullo.Alexander Graham Bell initially used Ahoy (as used on ships) as a telephone greeting. However, in 1877, Edison wrote to T.B.A. David, the president of the Central District and Printing Telegraph Company of Pittsburgh:

Hello (magazine)

Hello (stylised as HELLO!) is a weekly magazine specialising in celebrity news and human-interest stories, published in the United Kingdom since 1988. It is sister magazine to ¡Hola!, the Spanish weekly magazine launched in Spain in 1944. ¡HOLA! Spanish, Hello UK, and ¡HOLA! Mexican – launched in 2006 – make up the magazines published by HOLA, S.A and distributed in over 100 countries. Local editions of the magazine are also published in Argentina, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Greece, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Middle East, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Puerto Rico, Russia, Serbia, Thailand, Turkey and Venezuela.

History

Hello was launched in 1988 by publisher Eduardo Sánchez Junco, owner and chairman of Spain's groundbreaking ¡HOLA! magazine. ¡HOLA! was created in 1944 by husband and wife Antonio Sánchez Gómez and Mercedes Junco Calderón. They wanted to create a light-hearted magazine that focused on weddings, new babies, new loves, and other people-centered, personal stories. Antonio Sánchez Gómez felt that "things of human interest would have pride of place in the magazine, and people more than things." From the beginning, ¡HOLA! regularly sold out and built a reputation for elegance and good taste.