The earliest documentation of the term in German language appears not in non-fictional maritime texts but the nautical prose. In the beginning, the circumstances point to uncertainties regarding the usage of the word. Since the late 1820s, the words ahoy and ahoi marked with the coda -i, a feature demonstrating Germanization of ahoy, can be found in the German translation of English novels and fictions. Around the same time, the term was used by authors in original German texts on rare occasions. Ahoi became an established term around 1950 as it was used in the works of widely-read authors from the 1940s onward.Dietmar Bartz: Ahoi! Ein Wort geht um die Welt. In: derselbe: Tampen, Pütz und Wanten. Seemannssprache, Wiesbaden 2014, , S. 306
