It seems to be de rigeur in India to use familial honorifics when addressing, well, just about anybody. For example, Raj addresses an older South Asian man in The Big Bang Theory, as “grandfather.” Similarly, an Indian friend of mine always, always referred to me as “Aaron Bhai (Brother Aaron).” And of course, any Indian comedian will tell you all about the “aunties” and “uncles” up in his business.
Apparently this is also a thing in Malaysia, as a popular Malaysian YouTuber refers to cooks he respects as “Uncle __” or “Auntie __”, and those he doesn’t as “Nephew __” or “Niece ____.”
And then where was the video I saw that took place in (I want to say Taiwan) where a little girl addressed another girl (an older teen) as “Sister_____”
I’ve lived in both India and Malaysia, and those are the places I know of where it’s de rigueur (in addition to Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Singapore). More generally, it’s common in a broad swath of Africa and Asia that is basically anywhere not Europe.
Aboriginal Australian culture uses ‘Uncle’ and ‘Auntie’ for older people, ‘cuz’ (cousin) for same cohort, along with brother and sister terms for non-siblings. This is a very simplified version of their traditional genealogical terminology, which also applied kin terms to all people, not just actual kin and your close circle of acquaintances.
When I was a kid, here in the US, it was not done for children to call adults be their first names, so always Mr & Mrs, unless they were very close friends of your parents (and no, I don’t mean people they were dating), in which case, they might be “aunt” or “uncle.” If they were honorary aunts or uncles of your parents, you might call them “grandma” or “grandpa.”
My own grandparents were saba/safta on one side, and zayde/bobbe on the other, so my only grandmas & grandpas were the honorary ones.
It was also common, around the same time, for older men to address younger ones as “Son.” You see it in the movies all the time.
It was never as strong an inclination here as maybe someplace else, but it happened here too.
Don’t many Western cultures have the concept of an “uncle by courtesy”, whereby people would address an older male whom they’ve known closely since childhood as uncle even if there is no actual kinship? There’s not exactly a requirement or expectation to do so, but my impression is that it’s not rare at all. (This is, IIRC, how Duke’s character was introduced into Doonesbury).
The most common honorifics in Indonesian are synonymous with “mother” and “father.” If you wanted to get the attention of a person you didn’t know - someone you’d call out “Ma’am?” or “Sir?” to in English - you’d use words that also mean mother/father.
There’s more; Indonesia has a lot of honorifics and you basically never call anyone by just their name whereas you always use terms that frequently translate to bro, cuz, sis, auntie, etc.
Well, the word “sir” has at etymology that means “from the loin,” I think. So in other words, “father.” “Ma’am” is from “madam,” which is "my dam, " or “lady,” but in domesticated mammals, the mother of a particular off-spring is often termed its “dam.” I don’t know which usage came first.
So while “sir” and “ma’am” may not resonate with people the way calling the “Mom” and “Dad” as honorifics would, the origin may be the same, the language my just have evolved without the honorifics doing so, if that makes sense.
As another example, on the *Mary Tyler Moore Show," the character Bess (Phyllis’ daughter) who was 9 or 10 who the show premiered, called Mary “Aunt Mary.” This sounded normal and natural in 1970, considering that Phyllis and Mary already had a relationship when the show starts.
Ironically, as a progressive mother, Phyllis has he daughter call her “Phyllis,” not “Mom,” but knows better than to expect other people to follow suit.
Never heard of this. To my knowledge, “sir” comes from French “seignieur”, which comes from Latin “senior”, which is a comparative that means “older” and derives, in turn, from “senex”, meaning “old man”. There might be more distant etymology going back to a root related to loins, but it’d be a very obscure one.
I think it’s really common in many cultures for children to be expected to address certain adults as “uncle” or “aunt” rather than by first name or Mr or Mrs , but I think the OP is about something a little different. It seems to be referring to adults addressing/referring to friends or even strangers using terms for family relationships.
But I wonder if this is an example of addressing people by familial terms , or is it more that there are no familial terms in their native language. Words often don’t have exact translations - in English my uncle might be my father’s older brother his younger brother or his sister’s husband. And the same for corresponding relatives on my mother’s side. While in other languages, each of those people has a differnt title. It’s possible that in some languages, every older man is “Sir” , including one’s father and uncles