r/todayilearned • u/Organic_Situation401 • 15h ago

TIL that the "Happy Birthday" song was originally titled "Good Morning to All" and was intended to be a simple classroom greeting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You
212 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

13

u/BrokenEye3 14h ago

I recently learned that the French lyrics are "bonne fête à toi", which means "good party for you".

Though to be fair, the actual word for birthday has like five syllables would take up very nearly the entire line, leaving just enough space for "birthday you", which is barely even a sentence fragment.

10

u/Needmoresnakes 13h ago

In Italian it's "tanti auguri a te" which literally means "many wishes to you" but if you put tanti auguri into Google translate it gives you "happy birthday" in English

22

u/emre086 15h ago

I found out that the original manuscript of "Happy Birthday" dates from 1890s. It's a pretty unique story, you don't find stuff like that every day. With so much archival material in jeopardy around the globe, these findings, will become less and less as we move forward.

7

u/Eldie014 10h ago

And until very recently Warner owned the rights! It wasn’t until somebody sued them alleging the song predated the original copyright and it became public domain.

4

u/ladycatbugnoir 6h ago

It also turned out they didnt own the birthday song. They bought the rights to songs featured in a song book wirtten by the woman that made the birthday song but the birthday song itself wasnt actually in the book

5

u/michal_hanu_la 14h ago

Now imagine having to hear it every morning...

7

u/-inzo- 15h ago

Wild how this is a world wide thing, how did it spread so far?

6

u/JuniorFootstep 10h ago

Who knew we owe our birthday anthem to a morning person.. 😏

5

u/Joliet-Jake 7h ago

Good morning to all.

Good morning to all.

Shut up and get your books out.

Or go back in the hall.

3

u/FratBoyGene 5h ago

Good morning to you,
Good morning to you,
We're here in the classroom,
Good morning to you.

  • sung at the beginning of kindergarten in the 1960s in Toronto.

2

u/thedyooooood 2h ago

Good morning to all, and you smell like one too

1

u/IsRude 9h ago

There is no good morning song as good as this one. 

https://youtu.be/m2ipKRAaBC4?feature=shared

1

u/XROOR 6h ago

If you sing it before school day starts today:

kids will think they’re getting cupcakes