Say what?! Yes, this is obviously not a common thing to say – but its short form, bye-bye, certainly is. I always had a hard time remembering how to spell that and its counterpart good-bye (my visual memory was telling me that a good buy looked ok – hence the spelling errors.) I also wondered what a bye was and why it should be good. But when I discovered the origins of the expression, I was saved: Good-bye comes from God be with you/ye (I guess God has many ways of saving us...hehe.) This expression was apparently a common greeting some centuries ago. But since it was so cumbersome, people started to shorten it and spell it God b’wy, god b’w’y, godbwye, and god buy’ye to name a few versions from the sixteenth century onwards. At that point, people were aware of what it originally meant. However, as time passed, almighty god was replaced by the commonplace adjective good through analogy with expressions such as good day and good evening. Then somehow the bye-part was reduplicated and the less formal version bye-bye was formed – don’t ask me why, that’s the part I couldn’t figure out.

But all this does remind me that the equivalence of good-bye in Icelandic is bless – which, I assume, dates back to Gud blessi tig, ‘God bless you.’ Now there’s a thought...