That must make recommending books really difficult.
I have 3 nieces that call me aunt _ , I told one niece she could call by my first name only and she said that she want to call aunt - .
All my aunts and uncles are now deceased, but I called them Aunt and Uncle firstname (or in one case Uncle abbreviation-of-his-last-name, but that was the same “first” name Mom always called him) all my life. I also referred to them that way in conversations that didn’t include them.
I also call my wife’s aunts and uncles Aunt or Uncle firstname. A few of them are still alive.
My nieces and nephews did not call Uncle while we were growing up. I have a nephew who is 6 months older than me. My younger nieces and nephews do call me Uncle.
I wouldn’t think of addressing my aunts and uncles without the title (if I have any left) but some of my nieces and nephews (the ones that are closer to me) address me by my first name. I sense though that if they’re talking about me with someone else they use the title.
My cousins and I always called aunts and uncles by their first name only. But we’ve brought up our children to say Aunt X and Uncle Y. I don’t honestly know why the shift.
My niece amd nephew call me “Aunt familynickname,” which I hate. The family nickname is a diminutive thing that makes people not take me seriously as an adult.
One day, when my nephew was about 14, he asked me why I go by my real name and don’t call myself the family nickname. “Would you take a grown woman seriously who is named that?” “No.” “Well, there you go.”
I haven’t used the family nickname since I was 12; however, I’ve given up on trying to retrain any family members to use my real name instead. I will always be that diminutive little girl to them, I guess.
I bet you are the youngest? I am still referred to as the baby brother or baby of the family. I will be 68 in 2 months.
44, raised by hippies in CA.
Titles are used or not kind of at random, with no comment either way. The exception is my stepdad and his siblings, who I’ve always just called by their first names. Cousins-a-generation-older still count as cousins, so they get first names.
Husband, however, was rather shocked by all this familiarity - he’s Filipino and their family always, always, ALWAYS uses titles to their elders. (Even older-than-you-but-the-same-generation get their own title - Manong/Manang).
Personally, this habit of theirs helps a lot at family gatherings when I cannot for the life of me remember everyone’s name. Clearly a generation older than me? Auntie/Uncle with no first name is perfectly OK. Clearly my generation but somewhat older? Manong/Manang is perfectly OK. That means I only really have to memorize the names of people younger than I am - and while that’s an increasing percentage, it still makes it a lot more manageable.
I’ll be 40 next week. Born and raised in Cleveland, but my family held onto a lot of cultural practices from southern and coastal Alabama. I’ve always uses Aunt(married), Auntie(unmarried), and Uncle <Firstname>. I never called any older adult by their first name only until I went to University. There was always an honorific of some sort before their first or last name.
I never met any of my uncles or aunts; I referred to them as Uncle/Aunt X because my sisters did and because my mother referred to them as “your Uncle X.”
One of my cousins - whom I’ve also never met, though I have met her brother and one of her sisters - usually calls me “Cousin SCAdian.” (She’s from the South.)
My nieces and nephews all call me “Uncle SCAdian.” I’ve managed to break most of them of calling me “Uncle Childhoodnickname,” the latter being a bad habit acquired from their parents.
My wife and I address her aunt and uncle by their first names.
I think once your children have been conditioned to address their great aunts/uncles as Title Firstname, it’s okay for you to be on a first name basis with your aunts and uncles.
All of my aunts & uncles are/were called aunt/uncle first name. I am down to one living aunt. She will turn 100 soon.
My nieces, nephews, friends kids, great nieces & nephews, & various 2nd & 3rd cousins, all call me Uncle 48.
Since I umpire baseball & softball, I often get called “Blue” by the players & coaches. One of my nieces, calls me “Uncle Blue” when I officiate her games. Her teammates have started calling me that as well. I think it is funny, when an entire team of teenaged girls calls me "Uncle Blue’. It weirds out some of their opponents.
I can’t remember ever referring to my aunt or uncle as anything other than their first names. Maybe when I was a little kid I might have called them Aunt (name) or Uncle (name) but I have no memory of that. As far as I know I just used their first names.
In ouir family it has always been Aunt/Uncle (first name). At one point, when one of my wife’s sister’s 2 kids were teens, they started using simply our first names. Neither the kids nor their parents asked us about it. That made us uncomfortable and we were unsure how to respond, so we said nothing.
As time went on, we realized we disliked it and felt it disrespectful, but by then relationships between our 2 families had gotten such that we rarely saw each other, so we didn’t say anything about it.
My kids are all adults, but when I speak to them of my siblings and their spouses I use aunt/uncle (first name).
Up until I was around 20 I called mine Aunt Firstname and Uncle Firstname, but once I was an adult I started using just their first names.
My oldest nephew’s other grandma (not my mom) lives in a place with fire ants which she taught him to stomp on. I was never Aunt Catamount, just plain Catamount, because "we step on ants. The other kids followed his example so his generation has no titled aunts or uncles.
Always just first names in my huge southern family.
Aunt/Uncle, unless they say otherwise. Sometimes we called my godmother by her nickname, sometimes Aunt Nickname. (Although it was only a nickname us kids used, not the adults) I don’t think it has anything to do with being an adult or a kid – my grandmother lived to be 94, and she had nieces and nephews in their 80s calling her Aunt Wanda. Same as on the other side of the family – even the senior citizens use “aunt and uncle”.
Really, I don’t think it’s disrespectful to not use aunt and uncle, but to me it’s like not saying Mom and Dad, or Grandma and Pappap or whatever. It’s a title and they’re family, so they get Aunt and Uncle. That includes aunts and uncles by marriage and in-laws. (My cousins’ spouses, for example, call my parents Aunt and Uncle)
I still use aunt and uncle. To do otherwise just feels wrong. However, I’ve noticed that my nephews (ages 29 and 21) have stopped using Aunt Surly and just use my first name most of the time. Although my bro and SIL still use aunt when referring to me when talking to them and the boys use aunt when talking about me to someone else. Weird, it is.
I’m 38 years old, and I’ve yet to address an aunt or uncle without saying Aunt or Uncle first.