Yeah, I know this is a zombie, but I posted to it when it was current and apparently missed some of the followups at the time.
I had a black roommate for a couple years, and he never called me “Mr. Rik”. But then, he was from St. Louis.
I got “Mister Rik” from the General Manager of the hotel where I worked for 7-1/2 years. A big, tall, German-looking woman.
Like I said, I picked up “Mister Rik” from my former “big boss lady”. Interestingly, although I worked in that place for 7+ years, I don’t recall ever hearing her address anybody else in the same way. I almost find myself wondering if it was a sign of conscious respect to make me feel better. At the time I was hired, I had been in the restaurant business for 22 years, and had a ton of experience as a cook. I applied for a cooking position, but they didn’t need a cook, they needed a dishwasher. Being desperately in need of a job, I accepted the dishwashing position at the hotel restaurant. After a month, I was transferred over to the city convention center to wash the dishes there. I washed the dishes for conventions for 2-1/2 years, earning two “Employee of the Month” awards and generally excelling at washing the dishes while I was at it, before eventually being promoted to “banquet chef” when a position opened up.
So I wonder if she was just giving me a bit of respect for my willingness to do, and excel at, a job that was “beneath” me.
Makes me think of Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird, calling Mayella Ewell “Miss Mayella.” Classy guy showing respect to someone who may or may not have deserved it.
Living in Houston, working in a medical setting, I would typically go with Mr. or Ms. Firstname at work, at least with older patients. Black or white. Probably not Latino or Asian, though, now that I think about it. Calling a 25 year old woman Ms. Amanda would have seemed quaint or silly.
For many immigrants, such as those whose first language is Spanish or Portuguese (which have been mentioned a couple of times), it is the custom back home. They’re translating Don/Dom Firstname directly.
Those customs are changing (faster in some locations than in others), but many people simply don’t feel comfortable calling someone by firstname alone until they’ve shared food in an informal context. That appeared to be the changing point for many of my Latin American customers and colleagues, and also for many older people from Spain. Sometimes it meant the loss of that Don, sometimes the change from the formal you to the informal, but in any case once you’ve “broken bread” you move from the tentative, formal beginning of the relationship to the informal, established part.
When I was a boy at school in the 50’s we were all called by our last names. If there were two brothers, Smith, then one would be Smith major and the other Smith minor. Among ourselves we usually had nicknames - White would be Chalky, small boys, Tiny and tall boys, Lofty, etc, but if there was no distinguishing feature, then just adding ‘y’ as in Smithy would suffice. Twins were invariably called Twinny, which solved the problem of trying to work out which was which. Oh, we had one boy called ‘Donkey’ which, until I saw him in the shower, I assumed was because he had big ears.
When my wife started work in the 70s as a nurse, she was always Nurse ++, but in a decade or so, it reverted to first names. At the same time, I had a new boss, who wanted to be called Mr XXX or Sir - I got round that by never calling him anything at all. He didn’t last too long, fortunately.
This applied to us too and I had several unrelated uncles and aunties. It still happens today - My daughter is godmother to a friend’s children, and they call her Auntie. They also call my me and my wife auntie and uncle. Personally I think this is a good compromise. For a child to call an adult by their first name seems odd, while Mrss ++ seems too formal. That said - my new next door neighbours four children all call me Bob, and I am quite happy about it.
I have a coworker who is black and more than 10 years older than me that sometimes calls me Mr. Firstname as something of a joke. Makes me slightly uncomfortable, actually, (because it sounds a bit slave-to-owner to me, and I’m white) but not as uncomfortable as asking him to stop would. He’s the friendliest guy I know, and I would never want to let him know this isn’t quite working for me.
Once, he experimented by calling me Mr. LastInitial. But his last name starts with ‘T’, so I said, “You really don’t want me to call you ‘Mr. T,’ do you?” That’s when he started with Mr. Firstname.
He’s a lifelong Seattleite, so it’s not a Southern upbringing with him. Maybe it’s imitative of Southerness, though.
I’m as white as white can be, and from the southern US. Mister or Miss [FirstName]is very, very common around here - kids, adults, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, recent arrivals, founding families, we all seem to do it, regardless of our socioeconomic levels. It’s (a) good manners (not referring to someone by their given name unless asked,) and (b) a mark of respectful familiarity. I still call the parents of my friends Mr. Al or Miss Margaret, because they’re a generation older than I am. My kids call family friends Miss Kathy or Mr. Jason, (unless they’re especially close, in which case those are honorary aunts and uncles.) I also use “ma’am” and “sir,” whether I’m acknowledging my mother’s shout with a “Ma’am?” (“I hear you, and am waiting for the next bit of information,”) or a “Thank you, ma’am” to the store clerk who’s helped me (whether the clerk is younger than my own daughter or older than the lightbulb.)
The only variants I can think of? I was in the hotel business for quite a while, and I always referred to guests as Mr./Ms./Dr. LastName, unless they asked otherwise; and I use FormalorProfessionalTitle FirstName for close acquaintances (like referring to my late grandmother-in-law, a physician, as Dr. Katherine. Obviously, I couldn’t call her by her first name unless she invited me to, nor by Dr. LastName - too formal. And she wasn’t my grandmother, so I couldn’t call her Grandmother. Nor would I discount the title she’d worked hard to earn - Doctor. So Dr. Katherine she was. Ditto for classmates’s parents who were physicians or professors - they were Dr. Dale or Dr. William or whatever, unless they said “please, call me Dale.”)
Personally, I like the practice. I don’t feel subservient just because I acknowledge a generational difference or because I don’t assume a familiarity that doesn’t exist. It’s not about inequality to me, it’s about assuming a polite distance in my daily interactions.
Family names have become useless due to the high number of people sharing the one surname , as in there very common surname…high % with same… in many parts of the world.
And let’s not forget Indonesia, where many people have only one name. I once knew an Indonesian researcher like that, had only the one name, and he couldn’t get his work published in foreign journals, because the journals insisted on a first and last name. He finally made up a surname for himself for publishing purposes.
It’s become so common for me to be called Mr. + my first name in Thailand that it takes some getting used to the “normal” way when I travel to the West.