I’m 29, and I’ve known my dad’s family since I was really young, but didn’t see them often- maybe every three or four years. I always (and still) called them Aunt (name) and Uncle (name), with the exception of one aunt’s second marriage when I was already a teenager. He just got a first name, when I bothered to speak to him at all, as I always found him a bit creepy. (So, apparently, did some of his step-grandkids, who accused him of things . . .)
I didn’t meet either of my mother’s sisters until I was much older (a teenager in one case, 20 in the other), and my mom is somehow the only mature adult among them. I’ve never used the honorific with either of them, first name only. Interestingly enough, all of their children refer to my parents as Aunt and Uncle.
I always called them Aunt Sissy and Uncle Buck (for example), until I got to my 50’s, then I ended up calling them Sissy and Buck. There’s a point where you get so old that calling people aunt and uncle just doesn’t seem necessary anymore.
Always Aunt and Uncle, I don’t even think my mouth could move around just saying their first names.
My daughter (and the kids in her generation) continue to say Aunt and Uncle.
Growing up, my family didn’t really use Cousin Firstname for cousins, but my in-laws do, and my brother’s in-laws do, so we seem to have picked that up. We are completely confused, though, about what our kids call the cousins of their parents. Sometimes it is Cousin Firstname and sometimes it is Auntie Firstname. Usually when we are all together (big extended family) the adults are different relations to the various kids, so my daughter hears another kid calling a lady Auntie Firstname, she will pick that up, even though that woman is actually my cousin, not my sister. We’re mostly letting that one ride, no one seems too offended.
I’m 33 and still refer to my aunts and uncles as Aunt First Name/Uncle First Name.
That also goes for second and third cousins that are older than me. Growing up it would have been disrespectful to call them by their first names only but too formal to call them Mr and Mrs so they got the Aunt/Uncle title.
I’m like this with my father’s youngest brother, who is only 12 years older than me (11 years younger than my dad). When I hit my early 20s and started going to bars with him and his friends he asked me to drop the “uncle,” and it never came back. He’s more like a big brother to me, though we never saw/see each other more than once every couple of years. I call his wife by her first name, too.
The rest of 'em, though – on both sides of the family – get “aunt/uncle.” So do my mom’s best friend and her husband, plus one of my mom’s first cousins.
Two of my friends’ kids call me “Aunt Misnomer.” One is 13, and the other is 20. I like it.
Almost all of my first cousins now have kids, but I only see them every few years and we’ve never been able to standardize what their kids should call me. Sometimes I’m “Cousin Misnomer,” sometimes I’m just “Misnomer.” “Aunt Misnomer” has never seemed quite right with them, for some reason. I don’t much care; I’m just happy that at this point most of them are old enough to remember me between visits!
(FWIW I’m 43 and both sides are the family are from north Jersey.)
This made me realize that I don’t think I’ve ever met the parents of any of the friends I’ve made as an adult! I’ve met boyfriends’ parents, but no one else’s. They either live far away or are estranged or have passed away. No one’s met my parents, either.
Parents of friends I’ve had since childhood, though, will always be “Miss/Mister Firstname.” (Which, apparently, is a “southern” thing: it mystified my parents after we moved to the Baltimore area in the early '70s.)
My dad is an ‘only’ child and my mom only had significantly older half-siblings (three half-sisters and a half-brother). Mom’s half-siblings were between 14 and 23 years older than her. I have only referred to one of them as Aunt, because I’ve never been close to the other three (two of which are now deceased). But I still refer to the special one as Aunt Betty.
I’m actually much closer to my father’s aunts and uncles because I was raised in the same tiny town where they all lived. I always called them Aunt and Uncle (even though they were my great-aunts and great-uncles).
