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Origin and history of mayday

mayday(interj.)

international radio-telephone distress call, chosen by agreement in early 1923, "at a meeting in London of representatives of the leading European aircraft manufacturing countries" (news wire report). It was chosen as an English word that closely resembles the sound of French m'aidez "help me!"

The initial concern was the rising number of passenger flights across the Channel from London to Paris. S.O.S., the telegraphic distress code, was inadequate, as in early radio the sound of S was very difficult to hear under the best conditions. 

"May Day" Is Airplane SOS
ENGLISH aviators who use radio telephone transmitting sets on their planes, instead of telegraph sets, have been puzzling over the problem of choosing a distress call for transmission by voice. The letters SOS wouldn't do, and just plain "help!" was not liked, and so "May Day" was chosen. This was thought particularly fitting since it sounds very much like the French m'aidez, which means "help me." ["The Wireless Age," June 1923]

also from 1923

Entries linking to mayday

SOS

also S.O.S., universal signal of extreme distress, 1910, from International Morse code letters chosen arbitrarily as being easy to transmit and difficult to mistake. Not an initialism (acronym) for "save our ship" or anything else. It won out over alternative suggestion C.Q.D., which is said to mean "come quickly, distress," or "CQ," the general all-stations call for alerting other ships that a message follows, and "D" for danger.

SOS is the telegraphic distress signal only; the oral equivalent is mayday. The figurative sense of "urgent appeal for help" is by 1918. As a jocular abbreviation of same old s___, attested by 1918, military.

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    Trends of mayday

    adapted from books.google.com/ngrams/ with a 7-year moving average; ngrams are probably unreliable.

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