Naming of names
Firstly - a poll
Poll
I have always been interested in the way the characters in TV shows address each other, and, once I encountered fanfic, I became very pedantic about it. This probably stems from my first TV love, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, where the mode of address between the major characters didn't vary over 110 episodes, so if a fanwriter suddenly had Crane calling Nelson "Harry" instead of "Admiral", or Nelson calling Crane anything but "Lee" unless he was in a flaming temper with him, no matter what the formality of the situation, I immediately did the pre-Web equivalent of hitting the back button.
Over on primeval_itv I started a discussion on the way the characters address each other on screen. Though most of the characters are addressed and referred to by their first names, three - Cutter, Lester, and Leek - are mostly addressed by their surnames alone. What bothered me about this was that two of them - Lester and Leek - were Civil Servants, but in my experience (nearly 30 years) of the modern British Civil Service, however senior you get and however junior the person you are talking to, first names are used. Certainly I have yet to meet a PA who does not address their boss by their first name or nickname...
It had never really hit me before, possibly most of the TV programmes I was interested in were about the military, or the police, where it is still probably the norm to use the surnames of people of inferior rank, or set in the future, that this practice of addressing someone by their surname alone is far more common on TV than it is in real life. At the moment, I can't think of anyone, at work or elsewhere, who I habitually address by their surname without the honorific. Of course, in the 19th and early 20th Century it was the norm (you only have to think of Holmes and Watson) but since the last war it has definitely gone out of fashion - yet many TV drama series still have at least one person habitually called by their surname alone.
On that discussion thread (http://community.livejournal.com/primeval_itv/165074.html),
I got the impression that other people still thought it was quite common in civilian life for people to use surnames alone, without the honorific, when speaking face to face, and there was nothing out of the ordinary for a student to summon his supervising Professor - who he had met very recently - with a yell of "Cutter!" I wouldn't have dared to do that forty years ago at college. And if even a Permanent Secretary or even a Minister called me by my surname alone I am afraid I might call him or her something back - and not "Sir" or "M'a'm" either. Hence the poll. I really am interested in the results as I have been told this is a common practice among younger people.
Poll
I have always been interested in the way the characters in TV shows address each other, and, once I encountered fanfic, I became very pedantic about it. This probably stems from my first TV love, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, where the mode of address between the major characters didn't vary over 110 episodes, so if a fanwriter suddenly had Crane calling Nelson "Harry" instead of "Admiral", or Nelson calling Crane anything but "Lee" unless he was in a flaming temper with him, no matter what the formality of the situation, I immediately did the pre-Web equivalent of hitting the back button.
Over on primeval_itv I started a discussion on the way the characters address each other on screen. Though most of the characters are addressed and referred to by their first names, three - Cutter, Lester, and Leek - are mostly addressed by their surnames alone. What bothered me about this was that two of them - Lester and Leek - were Civil Servants, but in my experience (nearly 30 years) of the modern British Civil Service, however senior you get and however junior the person you are talking to, first names are used. Certainly I have yet to meet a PA who does not address their boss by their first name or nickname...
It had never really hit me before, possibly most of the TV programmes I was interested in were about the military, or the police, where it is still probably the norm to use the surnames of people of inferior rank, or set in the future, that this practice of addressing someone by their surname alone is far more common on TV than it is in real life. At the moment, I can't think of anyone, at work or elsewhere, who I habitually address by their surname without the honorific. Of course, in the 19th and early 20th Century it was the norm (you only have to think of Holmes and Watson) but since the last war it has definitely gone out of fashion - yet many TV drama series still have at least one person habitually called by their surname alone.
On that discussion thread (http://community.livejournal.com/primeval_itv/165074.html),
I got the impression that other people still thought it was quite common in civilian life for people to use surnames alone, without the honorific, when speaking face to face, and there was nothing out of the ordinary for a student to summon his supervising Professor - who he had met very recently - with a yell of "Cutter!" I wouldn't have dared to do that forty years ago at college. And if even a Permanent Secretary or even a Minister called me by my surname alone I am afraid I might call him or her something back - and not "Sir" or "M'a'm" either. Hence the poll. I really am interested in the results as I have been told this is a common practice among younger people.