The other day at Wal-Mart my husband saw a Muslim woman whose little boy was acting up. She was speaking another language (yes, believe it or not we have them thar foreigners here in West Virginia), but he could tell that at one point she called the kid by his full name as she was reprimanding him.
American parents do this all the time, of course. Anytime I pissed my mother off it was Abbie Lou Carmichael you get your butt in this house right now young lady! (Or words to that effect.)
I realize not every culture gives their kids middle names. But for those that do, is this a common thing?
In cultures that don’t do middle names, what do they do when they’re mad at their kids? Just call them by their first and last name?
Been Latin American I have two names and two surnames (I had it easy, I tell you) and just hearing them together would send chills down my spine. I think it still does…
I don’t recall ever having received the full name treatment as a child. When my parents were really angry they generally referred to me as “young man”.
I don’t think it’s a common practice here. I have heard it once or twice, but always with the parent putting on a faux-American accent, humorously alluding to what is considered to be “typical” American behaviour.
If either of my parents had called me in anger “Alejandro Fabián García Venerio Taddey, get your butt in this house right now young man!” I would have laughed my guts out.
Never heard of using the full name as indicating displeasure in Germany - I only know of it from US literature. Very occasionally I hear young children chided and being addressed as “Herr Lastname” or “Fräulein Lastname” (Mr./Miss Lastname), with a heavy stress in this case on the honorific (which is otherwise never used with children, they being addressed as Firstname, or as Firstname Lastname where ambiguous).
It’s not universal even in the U.S. – I don’t recall my parents ever doing it to me. (Of course, I had the PerfectChild thing nailed before ThePerfectChild was so much as a gleam in FCM’s eye.)
It definitely is a thing in Australia. I copped it as a kid. It has some currency in Vietnamese too. I asked my friend Kim Hoa (who is always just “Kim” to me) if she would assume I was angry if I called her “Kim Hoa”. She said yes.
My (admittedly weird) parents use my first and last names as their greeting of choice. When I arrive at their place, Mum invariably calls out me “Hi, Carol Maidenname”, and then gets all upset and says “I mean Marriedname! One of these days I’ll remember!”.
I vote that my parents have never used my full names to address me when they were angry. In fact, I remember asking them what my middle name was when I was about 5 because I couldn’t recall anyone ever using it.
My friend’s children both have two middle names, and I used get so fed up hearing her use all four names every few minutes. “Melinda Amy Florence! Get out of that now! Melinda Amy Florence! Go to your room!”. Ugh. She’s settled down a bit, but I’m apprehensive that when the boy starts walking it will be “Brandan Thomas Francis! Come here right now!”. Then it will be time to emigrate.
I guess it depends on the family and parents more than the culture per se (Puerto Rico). I don’t remember my parents saying my first name and two last names (hey, Mighty_Girl, I had it easier ).
I’m seldom called by my first name anyways, lots of pet names. Just yelling my first name would have given me reason enough to worry.
“Any child can tell you that the sole purpose of a middle name is so he can tell when he’s in trouble.” - Dennis Fakes
Worked pretty well for my parents. Of course, had they given me the names they originally intended, bellowing out my full name in front of my peers would have been punishment enough. And probably would have resulted in their being the victims of a double axe murder before my eighteenth birthday.
The first time my daughter (now 13) did something that really pissed me off, I remember thinking…“hey, this is the first time she has done something to really piss me off!”.
I was momentarily awed. So I hugged her. Today, both she and her brother (now 10) think these hugs are normal. And they kind of work at helping keep things in perspective. I don’t know if a new parent could intentionally “do” angry hugs, or if the spontenaity is what makes them work for us.
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