# Parents, What Do Your Children Call Other Non Related Adults? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 27, 2011, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-what-do-your-children-call-other-non-related-adults/583376 "2011-05-27T00:45:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ShibbOleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@ShibbOleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShibbOleth)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-what-do-your-children-call-other-non-related-adults/583376/21 "2011-05-27T11:32:05Z")
My kids call a few close friends “Aunt” or “Uncle”, sometimes with qualifiers to differentiate them. My good friend Mike is “Uncle Mike Pajama Pants”, not to be confused with their blood relative Uncle Mike. With others it’s Mr Steve or Miss Katie, etc. My kids are both in their teens. ---
**Author:** ![Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mean_mr.mustard/32/3865_2.png) [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-what-do-your-children-call-other-non-related-adults/583376/22 "2011-05-27T12:56:50Z")
Growing up, I was never given direction as to how to address adults. My solution was to never address them at all. I suspect most of my kids’ friends have adopted the same policy. There are a select few, however, who are not shy about addressing my appropriately (“How’s it going, Mr. Mustard”? as opposed to “How’s it going?”). I must say, this practice elevates my view of these few. mmm ---
**Author:** ![Weedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/weedy/32/301_2.png) [@Weedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weedy)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-what-do-your-children-call-other-non-related-adults/583376/23 "2011-05-27T13:38:13Z")
My kids call our adult friends by their first name. They call teachers Mr or Miss Lastname. Their friends’ parents they either call by their first name if the parent is friendly or for a few that they don’t know well they just sort of skirt the issue by using a bigger smile and extra eye contact. ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-what-do-your-children-call-other-non-related-adults/583376/24 "2011-05-27T13:57:17Z")
> [@Markxxx](#): > > When I was a child, there was a strict rule, you NEVER, call adults by anything but Mr Smith or Miss Smith or Mrs Smith. You don’t address adults by their first names. > > Seems like that rule died out sometime. I’m almost 47 and now-a-days, seems like kids call adults by their first names. > > I’m not saying that is a bad thing. Certainly I’d rather be called Mark than the “fake” Uncle Mark, you know the uncle/aunt thing you assign to close non-relations. > > So my questions is to parents, do you require your children to address other adults by their surnames or do you allow the first names? Or is it a mix? Or do you use the uncle/aunt thing? I totally agree with you - my own kids are trained to address our family friends as “(fake) aunt/uncle Firstname” and their teachers and other adults either as Mr. or Ms./Mrs. Lastname, or Mr./Ms./Mrs. Role if Lastname is not known (e.g., “Mr. Train Conductor”). I am currently trying to think of how to tactfully bring this issue up with one of my closest friends, whose kids call me Firstname which bothers me. They’re not disrespectful or bad kids otherwise and I don’t think I’d want to tell them to make their kids to make a special exception for me, so I haven’t ever brought it up and the kids are now 7 and 5 years old (it’s not like they’ve just started talking to me or anything). We hang out a lot with another mutual friend whose son always calls me “Uncle Firstname” and I’ve made a point of praising him/his parents for this within their hearing, which is more on the passive-aggressive side than I like to be. So realistically I probably have missed my window and I’ll just have to resign myself to admitting that if it REALLY bothered me, I’d have made a fuss about it 3+ years ago and at this point it is just one of those old-fogey SORTA bothers me things I’ll have to deal with as I get older, along with the inevitable decline in the quality of popular music, fashion and how everything goes too darn fast these days. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-what-do-your-children-call-other-non-related-adults/583376/25 "2011-05-27T14:30:20Z")
I’m 35 years old and I never called adults by their first names, not without permission. I don’t like being called by my first name by kids now. it seems unneccesarily familiar. My SO’s niece and nephew call _him_ Uncle in Mandarin but me by my first name…and it irritates me…but when they shout my name in their pretty little voices I admit it just melts my heart and makes me gooey all over. I am turning into a curmudgeon with a big old soft heart, apparently. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-what-do-your-children-call-other-non-related-adults/583376/26 "2011-05-27T15:27:42Z")
> [@Markxxx](#): > > I knew a guy who’s neighbors did, this, I cracked up to hear the little kid call him “Mr Ralph.” I was like, “Jeez it makes you sound like a hairdresser” 🙂 How funny. I actually had a neighbor a few doors down I would call “Mr. Ralph” as a kid. (This neighbor didn’t live near Midway, did he?) My parents would even refer to him as “Mr. Ralph,” so I’m not entirely sure who started it. It probably just came from the Polish, where _Pan_ or _Pani_ (“mister” or “miss”) + first name is a common way of addressing adults respectfully in a familiar way. ETA: Come to think of it, this is the way we did it in grade school, too. “Miss” + teacher’s first name (except for the coach, they were all female instructors.) ---
**Author:** ![Gus\_Gusterson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/85f322/32.png) [@Gus\_Gusterson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gus_Gusterson)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-what-do-your-children-call-other-non-related-adults/583376/27 "2011-05-27T15:32:52Z")
Our kids call all non-related adults Mr., Mrs., or Miss, even if the adult asks to be called by their first name. The only exception is that a woman may be called “Miss [first name]” (whether she is a Mrs. or a Miss - I’m told that it’s a Southern thing) if she asks to be called that. I correct any children that refer to me by my first name. If anyone protests any of my rules I tell them that it’s non-negotiable. My kids are being raised to respect adults. Adults are not their friends and will not be addressed in the way their friends are. Our friends initially asked our kids to refer to them by their first names and they were teaching their kids to refer to us that way. We nipped that in the bud. Now all of our friends are following the same rules we do and they like it. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-what-do-your-children-call-other-non-related-adults/583376/28 "2011-05-27T15:51:32Z")
Did we time warp back to the 1950s or something? The responses in here amaze me. People get offended when a kid calls them by their given name? As a kid in the late 60s and 70s I don’t remember anyone calling anyone Uncle, or Mister or whatever. We all just called people by their name; well except teachers maybe. This is weird. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-what-do-your-children-call-other-non-related-adults/583376/29 "2011-05-27T15:54:40Z")
> [@Leaffan](#): > > Did we time warp back to the 1950s or something? The responses in here amaze me. People get offended when a kid calls them by their given name? > > As a kid in the late 60s and 70s I don’t remember anyone calling anyone Uncle, or Mister or whatever. We all just called people by their name; well except teachers maybe. > > This is weird. Well, that’s exactly it. I didn’t call adults by their first names, and I actually still find it weird when I am calling people 30+ years my senior by their first name. It just smacks of undue familiarity. ---
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-what-do-your-children-call-other-non-related-adults/583376/30 "2011-05-27T15:56:21Z")
I’m 51, from the Midwest, and my parents’ friends were Mr/Mrs, except for my mother’s best friend who had Aunt privileges. They were introduced to me that way and it seemed natural. Even as an adult I kept doing it out of habit. If I had kids, I’m not sure I could pass on the tradition. The problem is that I met most of my friends when we were college doofuses. I’m not sure I could introduce the guy whom I met when he got baked and covered his bedspread with Cheese Whiz as “Mr. Mohr” with a straight face. ---
**Author:** ![overlyverbose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/9dc877/32.png) [@overlyverbose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/overlyverbose)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-what-do-your-children-call-other-non-related-adults/583376/31 "2011-05-27T16:03:43Z")
Unless someone has introduced themselves to my child otherwise, we usually use the honorific Miss/Mr./Mrs. Firstname. All my friends are just Firstname to my kids, and my best friend is Aunt, but everyone else is, um, titled. I don’t know why - it just seems presumptuous to call someone you don’t know by their first name. Even I don’t do that unless they’ve introduced themselves to me that way or asked me to use their given name. I certainly wouldn’t let my kids get away with it. For what it’s worth, I’m 35 and grew up in a small-ish town in the Midwest. ---
**Author:** ![Palo\_Verde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/65b543/32.png) [@Palo\_Verde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palo_Verde)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-what-do-your-children-call-other-non-related-adults/583376/32 "2011-05-27T17:31:27Z")
It totally depends on what the adult wants. I usually let the adult decide… the kids don’t care. My son has two best friends, he calls one of their parents Mr. and Mrs. Dean, and the other Cheryl and Billy. ---
**Author:** ![raspberry\_hunter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@raspberry\_hunter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raspberry_hunter)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-what-do-your-children-call-other-non-related-adults/583376/33 "2011-05-27T20:07:22Z")
I was raised (US South) to call any adult Mr./Mrs./Miz whatever, and had this ingrained so deeply that I still cannot bring myself to use the first names of my best friend’s parents, who would greatly prefer it. I sort of assumed I’d bring up the Little One the same way (California), but every time I’ve said something like “Oh, Little One, look, it’s Mrs. Whoever!” the person in question has said, “Don’t call me that! Just call me Christy!” Or they call me by my first name when they say something to their kid (“Say thank you to raspberry!”) so I assume that I’m supposed to do the same. So I guess she’ll grow up calling everyone by his or her first name. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-what-do-your-children-call-other-non-related-adults/583376/34 "2011-05-27T20:12:14Z")
Usually just by their first names. With the exception of teachers. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-what-do-your-children-call-other-non-related-adults/583376/35 "2011-05-27T20:20:00Z")
Usually just by their first names. With the exception of teachers. ---
**Author:** ![notfrommensa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/f14d63/32.png) [@notfrommensa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/notfrommensa)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-what-do-your-children-call-other-non-related-adults/583376/36 "2011-05-27T20:35:15Z")
None of the kids I have been around call me anything but my first name. For one thing, my last name is kind of hard to pronounce as it is easy to lisp it. some kids have addressed me as Mr. [firstname] and I really hate that. (Mr [firstname] was a infamous early SNL cartoon character). So kids are instructed to call me by my firstname. And frankly, I do not see it as a sign of disrespect for a kid to call an adult by his or her first-name. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-what-do-your-children-call-other-non-related-adults/583376/37 "2011-05-27T20:37:36Z")
I don’t have any kids, but my general practice is that kids should address me by my first name, unless their parents forbid it. I’m 30. There is one guy I know (not my brother) who insists that his son call me “uncle” for some reason, and I don’t fight it. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-what-do-your-children-call-other-non-related-adults/583376/38 "2011-05-27T20:42:13Z")
> [@notfrommensa](#): > > …some kids have addressed me as Mr. [firstname] and I really hate that. (Mr [firstname] was a infamous early SNL cartoon character). > … Ohhhhhhh!!! Noooooooooooooo!!! ---
**Author:** ![Rhiannon8404](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rhiannon8404/32/17929_2.png) [@Rhiannon8404](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhiannon8404)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-what-do-your-children-call-other-non-related-adults/583376/39 "2011-05-27T23:17:09Z")
> [@Gus\_Gusterson](#): > > Our kids call all non-related adults Mr., Mrs., or Miss, even if the adult asks to be called by their first name. The only exception is that a woman may be called “Miss [first name]” (whether she is a Mrs. or a Miss - I’m told that it’s a Southern thing) if she asks to be called that. I correct any children that refer to me by my first name. So you correct children to make them address you the way you want to be addressed, but you do not let other adult be addressed by your children the way they want to be addressed? I find that a very rude, double standard. With the exception of teachers and clergy, everyone here addresses everyone by their first name. If the adult expresses a different preference, we defer to the comfort of the other adult. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2011, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-what-do-your-children-call-other-non-related-adults/583376/40 "2011-05-27T23:38:33Z")
Teachers are Mr or Miss Lastname, (even if they’re married. But we’re only in kindergarten, so that may change as she gets older.) My personal friends are either Auntie\* or Uncle Firstname or simply Firstname. I ask each one before I introduce the kid what they’d like to be called, and that’s what they’ve all said. I still ask new introductions, though. People we don’t know so well are generally Mr, Mrs. or Miss Lastname, unless we don’t know their last name. \*biological or married into the family aunts are Aunt Firstname, for some reason. Don’t know why we did it like that, but it is a useful distinction when the kid is trying to figure out if they’re related or not. Especially because we have an Aunt Gina (my ex’s sister-in-law) and an Auntie Gina (my best friend). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-what-do-your-children-call-other-non-related-adults/583376.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-what-do-your-children-call-other-non-related-adults/583376.md?page=3)