For somebody who wants to start the thread, a good follow-up would be to build a list of the first names of characters in TV shows. My hunch is that there would be a smallish list of unique names. If so, then the logic of calling people by their surnames would make logical sense in the TV writers’ universe.
Here’s a starter list if somebody wants to get a spinoff going:
Tony
Greg
Raylan
Jax
Vic
Boyd
Gemma
Jackie
Carmella
Kalinda
Ava
Patrick
Teresa
Kimball
The one that really bugged me was one of the main characters in The House of Leaves, Will Navidson, being almost exclusively called Navidson throughout. I can buy friends doing it. I was iffy about his wife calling him that, but whatever. But then his own brother with the same surname came to visit, and called him Navidson, and I damn near lost it. Really?!
How can we have made it this far without mentioning Fox “I even made my parents call me” Mulder?
I hear Kojak called Theo (his first name) quite often.
The Brady Bunch? Alice and Sam were referred to by first name - in fact, I don’t think Sam’s last name was ever even mentioned.
How often does this still happen? The one current one (live-action, at least) I can think of off the top of my head is Schmidt on New Girl.
I was thinking that the characters on Glee would have a rather unique set of names - then I noticed that one of the “uncommon” sitcom first names (Tina) also appears on another show (Bob’s Burgers).
Of course, Malcolm in the Middle didn’t seem to have this problem, as nobody in the family apparently had a last name…
When I was in high school (an all-boys school in Cleveland), it was routine for guys to call each other by last name (though first names were also heard). I don’t know why, beyond the obvious “that’s the way everyone else does it”.
My closest male friends are those I taught high school with many years ago. We often address each other by our last names. I suspect this is because we were first acquainted in an environment where we were almost always addressed by students and faculty as Mr. ____.
Edit: Wrong thread -Oh, well…
On the Paper Chase, all of the law students called each other by last names only.
Anecdote: I had a classmate in high school, one of seven kids. Even his brothers and sisters called him by his last name.
When he was in the Army, I referred to the ex by (our shared) last name as he had a very common first name. My son, now active duty Air Force. is variously known by our last name, a diminutive of our last name, a name of someone famous who shares our last name, or Lunchbox. Even his wife, my dear daughter-in-law calls him by the diminutive of our last name. Life is good.
Yep, same here. Still got plenty of friends I refer to by last name and friends who refer to me by last name. It’s not that we only refer to each other by surname, but it’s quite common, especially when you’re trying to disambiguate among five Daves in your circle of friends.
But even after high school, there are a couple friends I refer to by last name just as commonly as first. They are almost exclusively male, but there are a few female friends whom I can address by last name and not feel awkward about it.
I’ve lived in the southern US all my life, and have always worked in the corporate world. Always first names. If two people have the same first name then we used both first and last.
How and why does this happen?! The mind boggles…
One of my coworkers always refers to her husband by their shared last name.
. . . which is less disconcerting than the friend who always calls her funeral director husband “the undertaker”.
This is slightly off the subject, but I have some friends that my circle has known for decades that we always refer to by both first and last name. I don’t know why *Jim *is never Jim but always “Jim Smith,” or Kathy is always “Kathy Miller” even in a group with no other Kathys. Mary is always “Mary Brown.” Even Mary always refers to her husband not as Mike, but Mike Brown. It doesn’t seem to be because their names are as common as the examples I’ve used here… it’s just a mystery.
Carry on.
The House of Leaves was written in the form of collective research. Academics and reporters often use the last name instead of repeating the full name over and over. (“Simmons said that . . .”) It’s a matter of professionalism and objectivity; using the first name would imply a personal connection, and therefore possible bias.
It explains why well known authors are referred to by their last name (Shakespeare, Hemingway, Faulkner, etc). Also goes with art (Van Gogh, Chagall, etc). Using first names would also be confusing as there are many, many authors with the first name William.
Working from memory here, as I’m not with my copy of the book, but it’s his friends and family (the other people in the narrative of the Navidson Record portion of the book) who directly call him “Navidson,” to the best of my recollection. I don’t have it at hand, but judging by the quote in the Wikiquote entry on the book, the editor/narrator calls him Will, his wife Karen (she kept the surname Green so this is not for naming confusion issues), etc. I’ll check when I get home.
This reminds me. I worked for about a year and a half in a law office. About half of the lawyers in our office and offices we worked with were referred to by first name in conversation, and the other half by last name only (with one being referred to by first name and last name.) I think all the “last name only” lawyers were male. I can’t think of a female that went by last name only in conversation.
People often call me by my last name, but usually because they’ve mistaken it for my first. It’s a family curse that’s been passed down from father to son for generations.
The settings are space merchant marine, space military, space prison, and back to space military. The reason why none of the characters in the first movie had given names was because the scrip didn’t indentify any of them by gender.
Yep, and boy’s who’ve already inherited their peerages use their title as a surname; royal princes use their father’s title as a surname. Prince William was known as “Wales” at Eton. Then when Harry enrolled they were differentiated as “Wales Major” and “Wales Minor” if needed.
They did have a last name, but it was never revealed onscreen. It was Wilkerson in the early scripts, but the producers decided not to reveal it so they could obscure the family’s ethnic background (though they did through in all that stuff about Lois’s family being from Eastern Europe by way of Canada). There were some gags where a loud nois would drown out their name whenever it was mentioned.