ma'am, do you think?

[emei]

Question for you English-speaking folks! In things I've been reading or watching lately, I keep realising that these fictional people don't use names the way I do.
I've been pondering titles and honorifics especially. Do you have thoughts on them? Do you actually use them in everyday life, adressing of thinking of people as Mr/Mrs So-and-so? What

Comments

[wavesofwood]

I'm in high school (well, secondary school) in England, and I call my teachers mostly 'Sir' or 'Miss', and occasionally Mr Smith, Miss Hallworth etc. 'Sir' or 'Miss' are far more common, though, and people (in school) tend to call all the female teachers 'Miss' regardless of whether or not they're married. And a couple of people call me by my last name informally, mostly boys of my own age with whom I'm friendly in a casual way. No-one ever calls me Bower formally, though. Hope this helps! You can ask me anything you want clarifying.

[emei]

That makes sense with most UK-based fiction I know - I'm still just sort of baffled that people actually use these titles in real life. ;) I'm curious about the last name & formal/informal thing - would formal adress be Miss + last name, last name only for casual acquaintances, and first name for friends? Does that sound about right to you?

[wavesofwood]

(Icon snap :D)
Yeah, every so often I actually think about what I'm saying and it seems weird, but it's so normal in school at least that you don't notice most of the time.
I think that's about right. If I had a teacher for one lesson and didn't know her, i'd say 'Miss (Last Name)', whereas I'd call a teacher I'd had for a year 'Miss' unless, obviously, there were other female teachers present. Except the informal last name thing only really seems to be used by boys, at least in my experience - a casual female acquaintance would probably just call me Rosalie, and a lot of boys would as well - it's very much people's individual mannerisms and speech patterns. Out of two boys I know, Tom calls me Bower, and his best friend Isaac calls me Rosalie.

[emei]

Hee, yeah.

Now that I think about it, we did actually use "Miss" the first years in school, when none of the kids remembered all the teachers names. It was more of a stand-in for the proper name than a honorific, though. And quite a few male teachers got stuck with it too, since Miss=teacher. :D

[netgirl_y2k]

It's a foreign concept to me - I've always called all of my teachers by first names

Now, that is a foreign concept to me. I'd find the idea of calling anybody who was my teacher by their first name horrific. Same for people I work for. Anyone even notionally in a position of authority over me gets addressed formally, at least at first. The same for anybody more than a few years older than me.

Although I would agree that calling someone only by their last name is more of an informal, jokey type thing.

[emei]

Authority and age, huh. That makes sense. I call everybody by first names (even say, University professors), though it's probably a pretty culture-specfic thing. From the fifties, I think - some Swedish politician did away with titles with all everybody and it spread everywhere.

I've run across the last name only-thing in fic where it seemed to imply distance and a bit of unpoliteness rather than joking, so it got me thinking.

[sweetestel]

(I'm absolutely terrible with French politesse, let me tell you.)What was that?! Lol! Does this mean we, the French, are considered as polite people? I thought the contrary. I want to know more about this

[emei]

:D French, as a language, is full of terrifyingly polite formulas to keep track of, and all the Madame/Monsieur/Mademoiselle for people you don't know - and when to use "tu" or "vous", and I always slip and use informal verb forms to someone I really should adress formally. Terrible, I tell you. The French are polite in language if not always friendly in manners and I'm the opposite and get CONFUSED.

If you're adressing a teacher directly, what would you call them then?

I've run across thing where someone goes by their last name because they share a first name with someone else, it seems to be the most common source of nicknames. :)

[sweetestel]

Oh, right, I had forgotten about the tu/vous trouble! Well, to be on the safe side, use "vous" when you meet unknown people. They'll tell you if they think "tu" is fine and you can't offend them by using "vous" (whereas some reserved people might be offended by the "tu")
But since French isn't your mother tongue, I think you'd be easily forgiven if you make some language mistake!

If I have to address a teacher directly I use "Sir" or "Ma'am", but most of the time we address them indirectly, starting the sentence by "Excuse me" and going on with the question! Also, we use "vous" with all our teachers. I think that only the last year doctorate students may use "tu" with teachers, because they've been working together for years and that most of these students are teachers-to-be.

[emei]

Mm, yeah. I know the rules for tu/vous intelletually, it's not that complicated - but it just won't stick. Using vous never comes naturally for me. (I tend to hope being foreign and smiling friendly keeps me on the safe side. ;)

[quietliban]

Here, we call school teachers "Ms/Mrs/Mr Surname" unless they have a nickname that is uh, suitable for them to hear eg. Mr Brown = Brownie or Mrs McAllister = Macca. University lecturers it's generally firstname basis even if they have qualifications that entitle them to Dr or Professor or whatever, unless it is in a formal setting and introduction then titles are used (eg. a speech or talk

[emei]

Interesting! It sounds like Australia is more informal and on a first name basis, compared to how people describe the UK and US. Sounds much more familiar to me, as a way of thinking.

I've noticed that same trend of boys/men being called by last name only much more often than girls - I guess all sorts of things tie into the reasons for it. Partly that lastnames only seems a military tradition, and patriarchal family structures where the men are supposed to carry the family name...

Nicknames/shortened names vs. full names is interesting too. Going by shortened names seems more widely spread in English-speaking places. To me, most shortened names or nicknames are very informal and for friends only, except for some very common ones.

[srin]

Woah, that is different. In school in the States, teachers were always Mr. Lastname or Ms./Mrs. Lastname as appropriate. When I was younger pretty much any adult who wasn't a close relative was Mr. or Ms./Mrs.

I did have a long period of addressing friends' parents as "Mrs. Kate's Mom", "Mr. Jeff's Dad", though even now, I think I'd call them Mr. Lastname or Mrs. Lastname.

Titles in undergrad were kind of strange. I had some professors who insisted on being addressed as Doctor or Professor and would get offended if you called them Mr., not to mention using their first names. In the theatre department, almost all of the faculty asked to be addressed by first name. (Although we did have one older, very distinguished professor who was always Dr. Palmer, even when he tried to get people to call him Rich.) In the linguistics department, we mostly referred to the faculty by their first names and flailed around awkwardly in direct address because we weren't sure who was supposed to be Firstname and who was Prof. Lastname. At Edinburgh

[emei]

It is different enough that I think it'd be a bit of a culture shock thing if I ever spend some time in either the US or UK, it was a bit when I was in France.

"Mrs Kate's Mom" is really cute. :D I think I said like "Anna's mum" or just "you", until I learnt their first names - and first names is what I do use for friends' parents.

Interesting how it varies by discipline and faculty. But it must be confusing when you don't really know who to adress how.

Ooh, talking about people using their last name only. I also tend to do that when talking about authority figures - teachers, professors or famous people like writers or politicians, especially if their last name is more uncommon than their first. Though I would still adress them with their first name and not a title if I was speaking directly with them.

a situation where you're not familiar/friendly/whatever enough to use their first name, but you also don't want to give them the respect of the appropriate title.That does explain the way I've seen last names used in fic, implying

[srin]

But it must be confusing when you don't really know who to adress how.

It definitely is. I generally end up defaulting to the more formal option, because too formal is less likely to cause offence than too familiar, but it is definitely awkward. I imagine it's a lot simpler when you just call everyone by first names!

Distance and a bit of disregard is it, exactly.

Language is such a wacky thing. :D