Happy Hallowe'en 2026!

Happy Halloween, Hallowe'en and Hallows' Eve to all my followers and readers! As an author with a passion for language and history, I thought I might use this year's spooky season to share some light etymology about the word "Halloween".

While modern Halloween celebrations are now often thought of as being quite an American tradition, it wasn't introduced or acknowledged across the pond until quite recently, brought largely by Scottish and Irish settlers' influence as they moved to the USA in the 19th Century. In fact, the event itself has a much more historic, interesting and oft-confusing backstory, but we can loosely trace its origins back to the Irish Celtics about 2,000 years ago. As with most modern holidays, the culture of October 31st gatherings began seasonal celebration, which they called 'Samhein' and observed annually long before the gradual association with folklore and bonfires took hold, and long before the 7th Century promotion of All Saints' Day, which the church included in the Christian calendar to be observed on November the 1st.

But let's focus on the word itself. Where did that come from? From at least the 600s (7th Century), Old English had the words 'Hālig' and 'Hālgian' meaning 'holy person' or 'saint', and, first recorded in 1225, this eventually became 'Hallows'...

From there, All Hallows’ Day was adopted as the name for what we now call All Saints’ Day.

Around the same time, 'Even' was being used an older form of Evening, and in religious usage, the eve of a feast preceeding a holy day was almost as important as the day itself.

So, the night before 'All Saints' Day' was called 'All Hallows’ Even' - first recorded in 1555 - and by 1745, this was first recorded as a shortened contraction, 'Hallowe’en', (with the apostrophe marking the omitted letters). Eventually, the spelling was further simplied and, became Halloween, as we know it today.

I could delve much deeper, but I hope that you all enjoyed the brief history behind the word. If you enjoy short explorations of history and language, please consider checking out my stylish language journals - five star rated - and available on amazon.com in hardback and paperback, that explores slang terms and expressions from days gone by. There you can find:

"The Great British Journal of Victorian Slang", "The Great British Journal of 1700s Slang" "The Great British Journal of 1600s Slang", and

"The Great American Journal of 1920s Slang"

Happy Halloween, everybody!