Learn English – What’s the origin of the phrase “what have you”

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I've never really understood the meaning and origin of the phrase "what have you".

Examples:

You can use a pencil, a sharpie, a ballpoint, what have you.

The display room is full of stereos, TV's, and what have you.

This site says …

[…] this expression uses an archaic form of putting a question (using have you instead of do you have) as a noun clause, and what in the sense of “anything that.”

But still, this phrase does not even sound like correct English to me. Shouldn't it be "what you have" instead?

Also, since when is this phrase common, and where is it used? Is it a regional thing or generally used in all English speaking countries? Also, "Your Dictionary" says it's been first recorded in 1920, but it doesn't even say where.

Best Answer

It’s true that this expression is in an interrogative form that is not normally found in contemporary English. It uses inversion rather than the auxiliary verb do. We would normally expect What do you have? (or, in the UK at least, What have you got?) It’s a colloquial way of saying, in the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition, ‘anything else (similar) that there may be, or that one can think of’, or even, simply, etcetera. It’s of US origin, and the Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest citation is from the 'New Yorker' magazine in 1925.

Related Solutions

Learn English – Origin and exact meaning of the phrase “I have to go see a man about a dog”

Wikipedia actually has an article dedicated to this phrase. It says:

The earliest confirmed publication is the 1866 Dion Boucicault play Flying Scud in which a character knowingly breezes past a difficult situation saying, "Excuse me Mr. Quail, I can't stop; I've got to see a man about a dog." In a listing for a 1939 revival on the NBC Radio program America's Lost Plays, Time magazine observed that the phrase is the play's "claim to fame".

Wiktionary adds:

The most common variation is to "see a man about a horse".

Almost any noun can be substituted as a way of giving the hearer a hint about one's purpose in departing.

The inversion to "see a dog about a man" eliminates any lingering uncertainty about whether the hearer is being put off.

A shorter variant is to "see a man".

As to the exact situation in which you would use this phrase, it suggests:

Used as an excuse for leaving without giving the real reason (especially if the reason is to go to the toilet, or to have a drink)

Back to Wikipedia again,

During Prohibition in the United States, the phrase was most commonly used in relation to the consumption or purchase of alcoholic beverages.

World Wide Words has additional info:

This has been a useful (and usefully vague) excuse for absenting oneself from company for about 150 years, though the real reason for slipping away has not always been the same. [...] From other references at the time [around 1866] there were three possibilities: 1) [the speaker] needed to visit the loo [...] 2) he was in urgent need of a restorative drink, presumed alcoholic; or 3) he had a similarly urgent need to visit his mistress.

Of these reasons [...] the second became the most common sense during the Prohibition period. Now that society’s conventions have shifted to the point where none of these reasons need cause much remark, the utility of the phrase is greatly diminished and it is most often used in a facetious sense, if at all.

Learn English – How did English get the “What is your name?” construction

There are some reasons to believe that this peculiarity of today's English can be ascribed to the influence of Celtic Languages with which English has been in contact for the last 1500 years.

Celtic influence

Here are a few examples:

In Scottish Gaelic, you ask someone’s name by saying “Dè an t-ainm a tha ort?”, literally “What’s the name that's on you?”.
In Irish it would be “Cad is ainm duit?” (formal) – “What name do you do?”.
Or informally, in Irish again, “Cén t-ainm atá ort?”, lit. “What's the name on you?”.
In Breton (of France) “Petra eo da anv?”, lit. “What is your name?”.
Cornish “Puth yw dha hanow?”, “What is your name?”.
Welsh (formal): “Beth ydych enw chi?”, “What is name you?”.
Welsh (informal), “Beth ydy dy enw di?”, “What is your name from?”.
Welsh (informal), “Beth yw dy enw?”, “What is your name?”.

General Celtic Influence

Several linguists including J R R Tolkien have claimed that there is a British Isles Sprachbund incorporating English and the Celtic languages. For instance the “I am working”, “I was working” is common in Welsh and Irish, but you can’t say “Ich bin arbeitend” in German.
See the book "The Celtic Roots of English" for more of these.

The Old English way of asking "what's you name" was Germanic

If you had a kind of Rosetta Stone handbook to learn Old English what would you find? Well there are actually a few ones on the net. Here is one. And what do you think the title for the first question is? Sure enough: “Hu hattest þu?”. Literally "How call you" (In German the verb heißen can be both intransitive "Wie heißt du?", or transitive).
So indeed when the Saxons and the Angles landed in the south East of the British Isles they still used the Germanic construction, which other answers and comments have shown, is still in use today in many Germanic languages.
For instance, out of 91 riddles in the 10th century codex Exoniensis, I've counted 13 occurrences of “Saga hwæt ic hatte” (“Say how I[am] called”) and 5 “Frige hwæt ic hatte” (“Guess how I [am] called”).

When did it all change ?

This is trickier but it is supposed to be during Middle English, the period between 1066 and 1450. I'd like to cite two excerpts of the book Beginning Old English (Carole Hough and John Corbett ).

The harrying of the north: The Norman French, themselves descendants of Vikings, led by William the Conqueror, over-ran the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and extended their territory throughout the Danelaw as far as the northern kingdom of Scotland.

In their vicious land-grab the Normans depopulated whole areas of Northumbria, carrying out an ethnic displacement later called ‘the harrying of the north’. Refugees from the defeated Anglo-Saxon dynasty fled with their retainers and servants to the court of the Celtic-speaking Scots in Edinburgh. There the Anglo-Saxon Princess Margaret married the widower King Malcolm. The speech of Queen Margaret and the Northumbrian refugees would eventually spread out over the Scottish lowlands, and become the basis of the lowland Scots tongue.
And a similar one taking place after the harrying of the north:

For around two centuries after the establishment of Norman rule in England, English was spoken but relatively seldom written. Even so, the influence of English continued to spread. Although Scotland was a separate kingdom, King David, the heir of Malcolm and Margaret, established peaceful relations with many powerful Norman barons, granting them land in the Scottish lowlands. These barons brought with them many English-speaking retainers, mainly from northern England, where there was a strong Norse influence. A distinct variety of the language, first known as ‘Inglis’ and much later as ‘Scottis’, evolved. Today, the pronunciation and vocabulary of the lowland Scots language is often very close to its Old English (OE) origins, as in ‘hoose’, ‘moose’ and ‘coo’ (OE hus, mus, cu)

This is consistent with a change occurring in Middle English. I find other explanations of the Celtic substrate re-emerging less convincing because of the 5 century gap between the invasion of the Anglo Saxons and the Exeter Book.

Online Resources

"What is your name?" in more than 330 languages”.
Wiktionary for all the small words included in the Celtic part.
Brittonicisms in English.
Middle English creolisation.

Best Answer

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Learn English – Origin and exact meaning of the phrase “I have to go see a man about a dog”

Learn English – How did English get the “What is your name?” construction

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