The thread on southern/black practice of using Mr. Firstname is what inspired this thread.
By ‘older’ I mean people of around your parents’ generation.
How old are you when they stop being Mr. and Mrs. Smith and become Bob and Gladys?
Do you change how you address people you knew as a child? Do you call her Mrs. Johnson when she babysat you, but say “thank you, Margaret!” when she congratulates you for graduating college? My brother does this. I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
My mom and I might talk about the lady who has always lived next door to my parents. We’ll both refer to her as Annie. But since she knew me before I could walk, I’d only ever call her Mrs. McKenzie to her face.
It’s a lot easier for me to meet new people and start off using heir first name if they use to introduce themselves. But is it silly for me to be a 32 year old American lady and still call someone Mrs. or Mr. Lastname? It seems odd to hear someone else do it, but I can’t imagine NOT doing it myself.
Relatedly - little kids calling you by your first name - is this cool with you? I was not invited to do it as a child. Were you? I think how I feel about it, depends on my relation to the kid or the kid’s parents. My sister’s kids call me by my first name. I’d prefer Aunt Firstname, but I’m not gonna grouse about it.
I am from Buffalo NY, have lived in Los Angeles and New England. Location seems relevant for this sort of stuff. Non-U.S. especially!
At seventeen I started calling my dentist Walt, because he was a snide bastard and I knew it pissed him off (and I also knew he was too professional to let that affect his work).
I never stopped using Mr./Mrs. for my elders. I will use first names for older friends who have told me to do so. I don’t think kids should use first names for adults unless given explicit permission, although it really doesn’t bother me if a kid calls me by my first name… One of my sons’ friends’ parents let him call them by their first names, which I consider an abomination. …I know my views are quaint and in the minority. I was born and raised in Arkansas.
I’m from the Buffalo area too. The only people that I didn’t call by their first names growing up were teachers. When I see my old teachers now, I use Mr/Mrs, unless they say not to. I’m fine with little kids calling me by my first name.
I called my dad by his first name when I first learned to speak, because that was all I ever heard him called. When I got into kindergarten I learned other kids didn’t do that.
For me, it depends on where I know them from. At every job I have ever had (going back to my first one at 16), I have always called co-workers, and even the executives, by their first names, because that is what everyone has always done at those companies.
The people I knew as a child, such as my parents’ friends and my friends’ parents, I still call Mr. or Mrs. (and I am almost 40 now). My best friend called me recently to tell me that my mom e-mailed her about something, and signed it with her first name. My friend said, “your mom knows I can’t call her by her first name, doesn’t she?” Well, I don’t think my mom cares, particularly, but my to my girlfriend, mom will be “Mrs.” forever. I don’t believe in switching over to first names just based on age. The point is that you are showing respect for their status & relationship to you.
As far as people I meet in other circumstances, I generally follow the rule that whatever they introduce themselves to me as, I call them that. My only caveat to that is if someone is clearly a senior citizen…often, they will introduce themselves to me by their first name, but I will call them Mr. or Mrs. out of courtesy (for example, the 2-flat across the street from me is occupied by a couple in their 50s, and her mother. I call the couple by their first names, but for her mom, I think it’s appropriate to use the honorific, even though she introduced herself with her first name.)
When I started working, so around 14. At the high school I went to, all teachers went by their first name. I’ve never known anyone who preferred I call them Mr/Mrs. Lastname, or seemed offended at my being ‘overly familiar’.
Interesting, XJETGIRLX. At my high school, one of the teachers wanted to be addressed by first name, and the school administrators said there was a rule against it. All teachers HAD to be addressed as Mr/Mrs/Ms/Miss whatever.
Personally, how I address someone often depends on when I met them. Bob, 30 years my elder that I play poker with, is just “Bob” because I was 40 when I met him. I met Mr. Smith when I was a tot, and even though he’s younger than Bob, he’s still Mr. Smith. There are exceptions.
I started calling adults by their first names when I started getting introduced to them that way, in my late teens and early 20s. I consider little children addressing adults by their first names to be rude.
It’s an age thing, BTW, not a class thing. When I was a kid, all adults were Mr. or Mrs., and as an adult, I address everyone by first name unless specific circumstances (Dr. Jones) or offices (Senator Brown) call for a title.
Another Buffalonian checking in, and I grew up calling adults Mr./Mrs, and to this day (I’m in my mid-30s), I call those people Mr./Mrs. It would never occur to me to start calling my parents’ friends, or my childhood friends’ parents by their first names. I would switch if they raised the issue and expressed their preference for being called by their first names, but this has never come up.
My mother, who is in her 60s, still calls the parents of her friends Mr./Mrs.
Right about the time that adults started introducing themselves to me with their first names instead of “Mr. or Mrs. Lastname”. People tell you what they want you to call them, and decorum says you go with that…….unless it’s one of those people who begin affecting some odd name because they’re going through some identity crisis. You know, like a guy named Todd who starts telling people to call him “Wolfgang” or something. Then you just stop talking to him and make fun of him behind his back with his friends.
Generally, I never called anyone Mr./Mrs. anything, unless they introduced themselves as such.
I actually remember feeling strange about calling folks with a title, but also about calling them by their first names. I think I just tried to avoid it most of the time, but my default was first name.
The high school I went to was, shall we say, a little different. It’s an alternative school, and while it’s not a rule that teachers go by their first name, almost all do.
I know I was doing it before I was 10 years old. I didn’t want adults to treat me like other kids. I’m more like to call people Mr. or Mrs. now, on first meeting, just because I often talk to older people for articles I’m writing, and I figure it can’t hurt to butter people up a little so they’ll tell me what I need to know.
When we were little, my brother and I called our parents’ really good friends “Uncle Firstname” and “Aunt Firstname,” as a measure of respect/authority (and, I bet, to get around this whole issue). As we got older, the “aunt” and “uncle” just dropped away – we now call them by just their first names.
We moved when I was three, and our family struck up a friendship with the family down the street. We didn’t know them well enough at that point to call them aunt and uncle, so it was Mr. & Mrs. Their son, who is my age, did the same with my parents. It’s still Mr. and Mrs. today, for all of us, even though all the parents have said, “Y’know, you can call me Bob, now.” It’s not so much a respect thing – because they’re like second parents – it’s become more of a nickname thing.
Otherwise, I started calling adults by their first names when they started being introduced to me as such. Occasionally, with elderly folk (usually friends of my grandparents), I will call them Mr.-or-Mrs. Lastname, out of respect, but that is usually met with, “Oh, please call me Gladys” (and then the grandparents get comments about how polite their granddaughter is, and I get brownie points!).
With the exception of some teachers, I have never used Mr/Ms/Mrs. I find it offensive, suggesting than an adult deserves more respect than a child. We’re all humans, we all deserve the same respect. I find it condesending to be refered to as Miss Mylastname. It’s either my first name or don’t bother talking to me. I’m 21 and grew up in Boston.
I’m closing in on 50 and I call most people at work Mr. or Ms. Lastname. I even call the people I supervise Mr. or Ms. For me it’s to discourage closeness, I prefer to keep work ‘friends’ at an arm’s length.
To me it’s always been about who they were, not how old. For example, one of my neighbors between ages 7-12 was Nacho. His son (the age of my Lilbro) was Nacio. His wife, who would have been called “Miss Carmen” by her students was just Carmen Daughter to me (to differentiate from, get this, Carmen Mother and Carmen Nacho’s Mother; and yes, when they had a daughter they named her Carmen, figuring correctly that it would shut both grandmothers up).
In high school we had a teacher that was (and still is) legendary in the area. People drive from one hour away for his tutoring. We heard that he made students call him by firstname instead of “Mr. Lastname” but most of my classmates were too stunned to be in the presence of greatness. Having babysat his kid for years, I became a sort of class hero for being able to adress him as Nacho from day one without fainting or anything
My aunts and uncles are still Aunt This and Uncle That; some people will always be Don Firstname or Mr. Lastname. It’s mostly a function of our kind of relationship, rather than of our relative ages. There’s some people younger than me that I call Don Firstname.
I started calling co-workers by their first names as a teenager, but to this day I still call strangers and new acquaintances by their last name until I establish that they prefer their first name. I’m in California, so this is pretty much everyone, but I always enjoy meeting a fellow cultural dinosaur. (I’m 35.)
I prefer that people address me by my last name, but I find that people get really offended if you ask this. I’m not sure why it bothers them so. I don’t insist on “Dr. Drake” or even “Mr. Drake” — just Drake is fine, but I prefer to reserve “Ermentrude”* for people who genuinely know me.
