Yep, piss-take makes sense. (I’m English too).
I think the habit comes as a hangover from Victorian formality. If you read Jennings or the Molesworth books, it is exclusively surnames that are exclusively used; in the case of siblings, they’d be referred to as “minor” and “major”. By the time my education came along (70s/80s) as well as the state school system, things had become less formal. That said, there was still a high degree of surname usage at my school anyway. All the better if one’s surname rhymed even vaguely with something rude. Not sure what the situation is these days.
As any fule kno, I should not have used “exclusively” twice. Chiz.
At Christian Brothers High School in Sacramento in the early 80s, calling one another by last name wasn’t an unusual thing.
Ditto ditto. Being called by your last name at my all-boys high school was the default choice.
You’re confusing it with Immaculate Conception, I think.
It was fairly frequent in my American high school in the late 80s/early 90s–even a couple of girls were often called by their last names (usually by guy friends, and they were all named Jennifer).
I was interested in/dated 3 different guys named Dave in my senior year, I should probably have called them by their last names.
I don’t know if it’s only for enemies, but in the Harry Potter books it does seem more common among children who aren’t actually friends. I don’t think Harry ever calls Ron and Hermione “Weasley” and “Grainger”, and I believe he was on a first-name basis with all the other Gryffindors in his year. Draco may call his pals Crabbe and Goyle by their last names though, I can’t remember.
This reflects my experience in American public (state) schools – it was fairly common among teenage boys but rare among girls. I knew one girl in college (er, university, and a private one FWIW) who was frequently called by her last name, but she was one of many “Sarahs” and had an unusual but short and easy to pronounce last name. Where I work there’s also one woman who’s often called by her last name alone, and again she has a common first name but a short, distinctive last name.
The only other times I can remember hearing girls called by their surnames was the athletes at my college. I assume that’s at least in part because it’s their last names and not their first names that are printed on their jerseys. But, as eleanorigby says, people who weren’t on their team usually called these girls by their first names.
Crabbe and Goyle are their last names, and that is what Malfoy calls them
[nitpick]Granger[/nitpick]. It’s not even just his own year, or Gryffindors - the handful of friendly characters we know from other years and houses - granted, there’s a lot of Weasleys in that group - are all first name with the main crew, too - Percy, Fred, George, Ginny, the Creevey brothers, Luna, Cho, etc, are all first-name.
IIRC, going back to the sports thing, the other Quiddich players call Harry and Ron ‘Potter’ and ‘Weasley’, too.
The teachers, and hostile characters…I concur with the ‘formality’ for the teachers, and ‘exaggerated formality’ for the hostiles.
Draco’s Crabbe and Goyle’s boss - he’s just enforcing that with the formality.
I was regularly called by my three syllable surname in school, lots of Mcs and O’s were. Lynches became Lynchy, Hinches became Hinchy etc.
When I was a teenager in Northwestern Ontario in the 70s, it was rather common among male peers. Girls were addressed by their first names, unless one was mad at them, in which case you would use their last name, assumably to no longer “treat them like a lady”, I guess.
If you ever saw To Sir With Love, note that Sidney Portier called his male students by their last names, and the female ones “Miss (Whatever)”; among the students the guys called each other by their last names or nicknames and called the girls by their first names.
My group in school were Lawless, Macker(he was a Mc), Comerford and Lynchy. I was also know by my surname. In fact I can only think of one guy in the class that was known by his first name and that was because he shared his surname with two more popular people.
ETA: All the teachers generally refered to us by surname in normal everyday talk.
[irrelevant anecdote] I used to teach at the school that that book and film were based on.[/ia]
And of course the Harry Potter books do owe a lot to the Jennings/Molesworth/St Trinian’s books. They paint a sort of nostalgic 1950s picture of Britain.
I first thought that too, but then I couldn’t remember their first names ever being used or given in the books.
As another anecdote point, some of us in high school called each other by their last names, some people did it only some of the time, but everybody called me by my last name. Even the teachers started doing it too. It got to the point that about the only person left who called me by my first name was an ex-sorta-girlfriend, and so if I heard someone say my first name, I didn’t even bother responding because they must have been looking for someone else.
As for England, I usually didn’t hear that when I was at Oxford. Then again, I was at Jesus College, which has a high proportion of Welsh students. It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that 90% of Welsh people are surnamed Jones, Thomas, Williams, or Price.
Hi, I’m older (52), my name is Dave. Not uncommon, even today at work I’m usually called by my last name.
Again, I’m American and this was common for me growing up.
We kind of mixed it up, though.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione call each other by their first names, though.