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As a German visiting the US
(social.fossware.space)
Explanation: Germans ~~used to~~ (apparently only in my bubble) call cellphones "Handy" and many people still do that. My friends from america found that quite hilarious.
Duolingo is insistent on calling it a handy. It does my head in.
It is the correct term. I would just like to know who came up with that?
The term 'Handy' for mobile phones started to become common around 1992. There are various different theories about the origin of the term but none of them has been conclusively proven.
In WW2 Motorola produced a Handie-Talkie (SCR-536) that could actually be hold in your hand (the famous Walkie-Talkie was strapped to your back). There have been plenty of successors with the same name but researchers doubt that this was really that widely known at the beginning of the 90s. Yet, one of the first GSM phones by Loewe was subsequently named HandyTel 100.
German-speaking CB radio circles used the term already before 1992 for hand-held transceivers. There are actually magazines and other things from as early as 1986 where the term is used.
It must have spilled over from these circles to maybe a marketing department (Telekom claims it was theirs, without prove though) to public consciousness.