@AndyW There's a discussion on our sister site at english.stackexchange.com/questions/15578. I strongly doubt that Pearson would have intended "histo" for historical because (1) it makes no sense and (2) he would have had a good classical education, which even at elementary levels acquaints students with basic verbs like histasthai and makes them aware of other words sharing its proto-Indo-European *sta root (e.g., stand, status, state, static, stable, establish, stay, ...).

For what it's worth, the English word "history" comes ultimately from the ancient Greek word istoria which meant an inquiry (see: en.wiktionary.org/wiki/…). So it's possible Pearson could have had that in mind when coining the term. But FTR, I don't know anything about it.