In authors I’ve been reading lately, Robert Parker’s hero, Spenser, is always called Spenser, not first name, by everyone from friends to lover; and Les Standiford’s Deal, is also called that by everyone, even his wife. Since I don’t recall that being common in real life except military, and few other situations, does anyone see this as unrealistic in fiction?
Not last names, but I know a few people who are known only by their nicknames (unrelated to their first or last names).
A guy at work goes by a shortened version of his last name. Without giving the real name, I will use Spencer.
His real name is John Spencer. He goes by Spence. He is generally referred to as Spence Spencer.
When I was in college we had a few people in our dorm who used to call everyone by their last name. I’ve also had it in work situations where, say, you’ve got four Steves or three Amys, so you just refer to them by last name to avoid confusion. So no, I don’t see it as unrealistic if it happens in fiction.
I used to work with a woman who everyone knew only as (lastname).
I worked with her for 20+ years and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone call her by her first name.
She had an unusual, fun-to-say surname.
mmm
In Pakistan in the 1980s in school and college almost everyone was addressed by their family names by both classmates and faculty/staff.
40+ years later we still almost exclusively address each other by family name or title. In Pakistan, many people have “titles” such as Sheikh or Khawaja which are passed down in addition to the family name. So a chap called Sheikh Muneeb Hyder would be called either Sheikh (= title indicating he was descended from the holy prophet) or Hyder (family name or patronym).
This is very weird in cases of people who followed a patronymic system, because if you meet them at home you have to switch to their given name, otherwise you’d be using their father’s given name.
And of course this only applied to men. Women students were always addressed by their given names.
My friend’s wife always uses my last name. It’s kind of funny–she does know my first name but it’s a habit that goes the 70s when she and my friend were dating.
In college, everyone in the dorm was referred to by last name. Part of it was that there were several people with the same first name.
Teammates on professional sports teams seem to do it all the time.
One of my female co-workers is always called by her last name. Not Ms. Lastname, just the last name.
It does seem to be more common for men, though, in my experience (probably due to the fact that, in our culture, it’s much more common for women to change their last name than men).
In my school age-cohort various versions of my first name were extremely common. It was not at all unusual to have 6 or 7 of us in a class, both boys and girls. I was always very happy to switch to my last name, so there were several years when i went by that.
It was considered odd for a girl to do so, though, so generally the boys were pressured to step up - even when i was happily volunteering.
At home in Ireland we’re so thick on the ground that we are known by our clan nicknames, as the surname is mainly assumed. So many people would call me by that name, or firtname-clan nickname.
I had a “returning student” (technical college, where we’d get an assortment, everyone from young “13th graders” to more mature people). I noticed she had become good friends with a couple of the teachers, who she referred to by last name only.
I was a friend of her dad, so I’d see her off campus, and I still remember the day when she saw me downtown and called out, just my last name.
I waved, and as I walked towards her I thought “Hey, I guess I’m on a last name basis!”
And, speaking of Spenser, I don’t remember Hawk ever being referred to by any name other than just “Hawk.”
This is just my opinion, and in real life I know many exceptions and idiosyncrasies, but a “last name basis” does not imply friendship or even familiarity. One might talk about “Jones” when discussing him with a third person, but to his face it would be either “Professor Jones” or, if you are indeed a good friend, “Indy”.
BTW, as I understand it there are various combinations in e.g. Japanese like [first name] + san, where [first name] is, of course, informal, but san is something like “Mr.”
Whenever there are a group of friends with more than one person with the same first name, there’s generally a tendency to call those people by some sort of nickname, and if there isn’t one, then you default to the last name. It’s the case with a few "Dan"s in a certain group I knew - one had a nickname, and the other two were always known by their last name. It really confused me whenever someone from outside the group referred to one of them as “Dan” since I had no idea who they meant unless I already knew which Dan they knew among the group.
And then there’s Wilson, Tim’s neighbor on the TV show Home Improvement: “Wilson” is both his first and last name. Would it help if you had a headcanon where Spenser’s full name was “Spenser Spenser”?
I’ve known quite a few people who went by their last name and even introduced themselves that way. Mostly men but a couple of women.
In one of the Anne of Green Gables novels by L. M. Montgomery, (either …of the Island or …of Windy Poplars, I think), she’s walking in a cemetery with a friend and sees a tombstone that says, “Sacred to the Memory of Miss Kent”. Her friend explains that this woman worked for a local family for decades, was always referred to that way, and died before telling anyone her first name.
It was only in the very last episode of the old Morse series that we learned that his first name was “Endeavor”.
On the other hand, British royalty officially have no last name, and use instead the name in their highest titles, instead. When the present king of the UK was in the military, he was addressed as “Wales”. (This means that the line, “‘Tis I, Hamlet the Dane.” means more than we tend to think it does. It’s a direct—but ambiguous enough to be safe—claim to be the rightful king of Denmark.)
At school I remember always running into people who went by their last name—at about the same frequency as you would people who went by their initials. I do know that many don’t go by that anymore, but some do.