This thread reminded me of all the first-name political yard signs I’ve seen recently. During the 2020 primary season, I saw signs for Joe, Bernie, Mike, Pete, Amy, and Tulsi. Some signs had only the first name; some had the first name in huge letters and the surname in much smaller print. The only last-name-only yard signs I saw were for Elizabeth Warren.
My town had a mayoral election recently, and those yard signs were mostly first names. Gee, when did we get so chummy with our political candidates?
In my experience men are more often in environments where the culture is to use last names. Military service, police, and sports teams being the most typical - it’s usually what’s on your jersey or uniform. Women do participate in those areas, but when they do they’re also referred to by last name.
I grew up in a family with a ton of military people, including both parents, and I started sports before puberty. I typically call everyone by their surname if I know it, male or female, by default. Though my ex-wife took my last name, I always called her by her maiden name (something she and her friends loved to imitate me doing). First names are a last resort for me.
interesting epbrown. your post reminded me that in the show ‘the office’ jim always called pam ‘beasley’, even after they married.
if there are multiple people with the same first name i will default to last name, no matter the gender. as i take people around the office to be introduced, i always ask if they have a preferred form of address and go with whatever they say.
Agree with this. In my fraternity pledge class of 11, three of us had the same first name including myself. Ultimately nicknames including variations of our surnames won out, to distinguish us from each other.
I remember being called by my surname in high school, it wasn’t a positive thing.
I mean, there’s nothing inherently insulting about my surname, but it’s like Biff calling Marty “McFly” in BTTF: there’s something cold and vaguely demeaning about it.
In adult life though, the only people I know who are called by their surnames are people who have difficult names for the average English-speaker to pronounce and the surname happens to be a smidge easier, or have an obvious contraction (oh and some Chinese friends where the average English-speaker doesn’t know which is their given and which is their surname). And in this case, the gender split is even.
Exactly. Please don’t put misandry in situations where it doesn’t exist. I had four Mikes in my friend group. We used last names when it was a public situation, and nicknames when it was personal.
At work, there were seven Daves on our floor. Last names were used publicly when needed, or Division (Accounting Dave, Maintenance Dave). Privately, “dumb-ass Dave, Mazda Dave, tall Dave” were also used :)P
FWIW, which isn’t much: I went to all-girls boarding schools in the northeast USA in the 1960’s. We often, though not always, called each other by our last names.
That usage might have been picked up from the equivalent boys’ schools, or even from reading books about them; I don’t know.
IME it’s more common with men than women. And has been over my 60-something year life. Like others, I propose the greater male exposure to military and sports being part of the reason for the difference.
Something nobody else has mentioned …
IMO/IME in any given year cohort there are fewer common male first names than common female first names. IOW, there is more variety in both highly popular and moderately popular female names. Which difference leads to more naming collisions among males.
Through much of elementary school I was 1 of 3 in my year group sharing my given name. And there were 2 other sets of 3 boys sharing names and 2 sets of 2 shared names among the boys. As to the girls we had one set of 3 and one set of 2 and that was it; all the rest of the given names were unique.
And even of the set of three they were variations of a common theme. e.g. we didn’t have 3 Susans. We had Susan, Susann, and Suzanne. But we did have 3 Michaels spelled the same (of whom two used Mike and one used Michael).
In junior high and high school the number of matching given names only went up as the total number of kids in any given grade got larger. But subdivided among more classrooms it seems we matching kids were more diluted.
Bottom line:
IMO the collisions that drive the desire to use something other than unadorned given names seems more common among males, at least among those of near-peer age.
I’m not sure how this translates to folks not near my era. I can’t speak to the relative variety of popular male & female given names for current 20 yos or current newborns.
When I was in high school, guys were normally called by their last name and girls by their first name. (By fellow students, that is – teachers used our first names, except for the one who called everyone “Mister Lastname” or “Miss Lastname”.)
I worked with a guy like that.
Used to work with a Jennifer. When a second Jennifer came along, she was called “Jennifer Two” and the original became “Jennifer One”. Then “Jennifer Three” joined us…
This was the pattern when I was in high school (early 1970s); boys tended to address each other by last names. I didn’t really care for that—I thought it was a silly affectation preferred by insecure guys—and tended to call everyone by their first names.
You thought that in the 1970s? I was in high school in the 70s and I can honestly say I never thought anyone was insecure - that sort of psychobabble wasn’t around until the 1980s, ime. People were either “cool” or “assholes” before that.
And some of you probably used last names outside of the classroom and even after finishing school, but even if it wasn’t exclusively a male thing it did more frequently occur in male dominated spaces.
I agree about the male participation in sports being a big factor. When I was in college, I spent the first couple years hanging out with non-athletes, and I don’t remember referring to any of the guys by their last names. Then I started dating a football player, and lots of the guys on the football team went by their last name.
We once had 2 people who went by pat in the office. Due to the popularity of the bat franchise, we went with Patman and patwoman. Sometimes the 60’s show theme was da da dummed as well.
I’m glad I happened to arrive here when this topic came up* (having come from Wikipedia for an unrelated topic, and this was on the 404 page), because this is something that I’ve noticed before, but I didn’t want to be the first to publish something on it (and possibly have it get named after me), so I’m happy, though not just for that reason, that someone else has noticed it too. I’ve always interpreted it as a subtle form of sexism, somewhat like how naita describes:
I did ask about it on Quora a few years ago, wondering if it had already been described and named, but nobody knew a term for it more specific than “disrespect”, “misogyny”, “sexism”, “a form of paternalism”, etc.
The phenomenon I noticed is that, in articles I read, women will be disproportionately referred to by given name when men would be referred to by surname, or women with specific titles (e.g. Dr.) will be referred to without them when men would be referred to with them. This doesn’t seem to happen as much in places with actual editorial standards (e.g. newspapers, Wikipedia, etc.), instead being more common in less formal articles (e.g blog posts). I can’t be confident in that, though, because I haven’t noticed it as much recently as I did a few years ago, but maybe that’s just because my reading habits have changed.
It also happens when things are named after people. One particularly ironic example is the Matilda effect. Wikipedia says “The Matilda effect is a bias against acknowledging the achievements of those women scientists whose work is attributed to their male colleagues.” It’s named after its first describer, Matilda Joslyn Gage. If she’d been a man, I bet it would be called the Gage effect. To increase the irony, this name was given to this effect by another woman.
But, on the other hand, I expect that this is sometimes (perhaps in that case) done deliberately, to draw attention to the fact that the namesake is/was a woman. The namer probably thinks “If I name this thing after its namesake’s surname, people who hear about it will assume the namesake is/was a man, because most things that are named after people are named after men.” But, in trying to combat that form of sexism, they further this other form of sexism we’re discussing. I don’t know the solution there.
Further anecdata on the topic of people going by their surnames with friends due to given name collisions and other reasons
When I was at university, there were a lot of Emilys due to the surge in that name’s popularity a couple of decades ago. It was the top name for women, and I don’t recall any other being close. (It’s probably still the case, given the duration of the surge and the usual age range of university students.) A lot of them went by their surnames to avoid confusion. For the men, Michael and Andrew were the top names, but it seemed to me that they split the commonality enough that not as many of them went by their surnames (despite having a lot more male than female students overall). (This seems to be the opposite of what LSLGuy describes above, where collisions were more common among masculine names.)
At that same school, I had a friend who was in ROTC. She said that they used surnames in ROTC (as is the usual military practice), but were encouraged to use each other’s given names outside of ROTC (as is the usual practice among students there), but they found that difficult due to habit.
At another school, where the custom was to address teachers by their given names, one of them told us to call him by his surname (but not with Mr. in front of it). He said that he preferentially went by his surname, and that which name someone used for him was a way he could tell apart acquaintances and strangers. (Both of his names were unusual, to the point of apparent uniqueness, in this part of the world.)
In another context, where most of the people there are men, we have some given names shared by multiple people. In this group, we usually refer to those people by their full names if there’s any ambiguity, and address them by their given names only (because they aren’t usually there at the same time). In some cases, it’s been different. One guy was called Big Mike, because there were other Mikes and Michaels, and he was big (like Jean Valjean, not obese). Another, who hasn’t been around in a while but is still mentioned from time to time, is usually referred to by his surname only, despite his given name not being common in the group, just (as far as I can tell) due to his surname being pretty unique and maybe fun to say. We have had multiple women with the same or very similar given names, and, in the few cases I remember, they were disambiguated by using their full names or their given names and sur-initials, which does happen for the men too, but more rarely.
Possibly related?: Gender ratio in scientific fields being related to each field's beliefs about success
A couple of years ago, I read an article (in Scientific American, I think) that said that there was a strong correlation between the gender ratio in a given scientific field and that field’s beliefs about what makes someone successful in it. As I recall, it said that if a field emphasized success as a result of hard work, it would have relatively more women, and if it emphasized success as a result of individual brilliance, it would be male-dominated. I don’t immediately see one, but I wonder if there’s any connection between that and the difference in name usage between referring to men and referring to women.
*and a time when I felt like subjecting myself to the inhumane treatment that is Discourse, in the name of science
I have a friend who refers to his own wife by her (maiden) last name, as if he’s a CEO from the 1930’s and she’s a new ad exec straight out of college.
Before I became the cultivated and sensitive man I am today, I found it very whimsical and hilarious, but now it seems like a fratboy joke carried on for far too long. But if she’s okay with it, whatever