The highest-ranked student in the class is named for the person who says goodbye.
The word comes from the Latin valedicere, meaning "to bid farewell." It combines vale, the imperative of valere ("be well, be strong"), with dicere ("to say").1 In classical Latin, vale was the standard farewell, the equivalent of "goodbye." The valedictorian, etymologically, is the one who says the last word.
The English noun "valedictorian" first appeared in American English in 1832, designating the student who delivers the farewell oration at commencement.2 The adjective "valedictory" had entered English earlier, around 1650, meaning "pertaining to leave-taking."
The tradition of selecting a valedictorian traces to 1772 at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Norborne Berkeley, Baron de Botetourt, the colonial governor, established a gold medal for the student most skilled in Latin composition and oratory, as judged by the college president and faculty.3 The winning student delivered the farewell address at commencement and received the designation valedictorian.
For the first century of the practice, selection depended on a student's skill in Latin speech, not on grades. The shift to grade point average as the primary criterion came gradually during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as high school curricula expanded beyond classical studies into sciences, modern languages, and vocational subjects.4
The companion title, salutatorian, derives from the Latin salutare ("to greet"). The salutatorian delivered the opening address, the greeting, while the valedictorian delivered the closing one, the farewell. Together the two titles framed the ceremony with a formal hello and goodbye, both in Latin.
By the 1920s, most American high schools had adopted grade point average as the measure for valedictorian selection.5 A growing number of schools have since abandoned the designation entirely, citing what one Ohio school district in 2024 called "unhealthy competitiveness among students."6 The word that once honored the student who spoke best in Latin now goes to the student with the highest number.