Driving Miss Daisy.
 

Since I'm a very casual person, I generally encourage people to call me by my first name. But a certain percentage of people feel obligated to insert some type of honorific. So I often end up addressed as MizzLee.

It makes me feel weird, kinda creepy, like it's a subservient thing. Sometimes I get it from people I don't know, or even talk to on the phone--I got it from a state transportation Right of Way agent from Houston yesterday. Sometimes I get it from people I know--it took me years to break my son-in-law of the habit. He said it was a sign of respect for his elders.

I'm not that fucking elderly!

oh, and as for ma'am . . .

Sorry ma'am.

I *guarantee* it's my home training coming out.

Better too formal than too casual. But both sides have to be comfortable with it.

eta:

While we're at it, I don't like your signature. kthxbai

I still find it weird when people adress me as Councillor. Feels even weirder introducing myself as Councillor ******. I tend to rattle through that bit and follow it quickly with my first name, as if to say 'but please call me Dana'




[eta] There are times when dealing with people over the age of 65, when I am slightly hesitant about using their first names. I know for some people it's simply impolite. But I would never consider using Miss before their first name. I would just use Miss with their surname.

If your older than the person in question you are their elder.

I know what you mean, Cloud.. as the joke goes, when somebody says Mr. Dallas, I start looking for my dad!

My advice is to accept Ms. or Miss or whatever, plus your last name. Look at it as a gesture of courtesy, which is what it is 9 times out of 10. (I'm talking about people you run into at work. Your daughter needs to buy her husband a clue... implying, however indirectly, that you're over the hill is not good in-law schmoozing!!) Feel free to invite them to use your first name, but remember that in this day and age anybody who actually uses a title without being told to probably does it because they feel it's "proper," and they may actually feel MORE uncomfortable using your first name.

I think it's a Southern (U.S.A.) thing.

I hate it when people tell their kids to call me Miss Monster or Mrs Beest without actually checking (a) what my name actually is and (b) if it's OK. I think that's discourteous. Also if people call me something and I correct them or tell them what I'd like to be called but they insist on repeating their error. That pisses me off. What's so tough about "your majesty, queen monster, supreme-being above all others"? :rolleyes:

No-one has ma'am'd me for a while, or maybe I've stopped noticing. that was way weird when I first landed here (it's Madam in the UK and much less frequently used)

Trouble is of course, that we all have different ideas of courtesy.

I have alot of trouble calling my friend's parents by their first names as *I* feel that it's rude...but of course if they tell me they prefer it that way I get around it by...


only speaking to them when they're looking at me. :greenface I just *can't* do it, it feels wrong and makes me feel uncomfortable to call someone by their first name without having some sort of friendship with them personally. Even for kids my age I always wait until they've introduced themselves to me (even if someone else has already told me their name) before I use their first name to talk with them.

If I know your first name, I'll use it. Unless I'm pissed at you....then I might call you Mister so and so.

I actually have a hard time using the first names of people I'm really close to, because it feels too formal. My husband is always "honey" or "sweetheart," and with all my friends I just say "Hey" to get their attention.

I use honorific terms with people I do not know, and pretty much whatever I feel like using when I become familiar with them. I was raised with pretty formal manners training, but use them only in the most appropriate situations. The rest of the time I'm actually pretty coarse, on purpose.

My kids have standing orders to use title + last name for adults, especially in the case of people we don't know . . . .
. . . . but they are also supposed to use the first name when asked!

I'm a little like that. Everyone's 'chuck' in my conversations, or m'dear, or hon.

I usually make up names for my close friends and family. It was useful in the days of landline only phones, because if I said, "Hello Stevo" to my brother for example, it could only be me.

I've surprised my friends and colleagues in the past when giving my details in a formal situation. Firstly, many of them don't know/ forget my correct first name is slightly different from the one they use, and they also forget I kept my married name when I divorced - they know my surname of course, but they expect me to be Miss. The combination of the two make them look at me as if I'm giving fraudulent information.

exactly my point.

Of course are also several "unusual factors" take into account in my case
(a) I live in hippy Ann Arbor
(b) My kids go to a school where all teachers are addressed by their first names.
(c) My parents (and their peers) were teenagers (in the UK) in the 60s, and I (like most of my friends) was brought up to refer to most of my parents friends by their first names. It was pretty new and shocking to the previous generation then, but that was the whole point. It would just be weird to go back to last names and honorary titles.

Mr. Fred or Mr Bob, etc,,,
or Mz Carol , Dr Laurie , etc,,,,,
Is ok in my book

Now as to yes mam and no mam , yes sir , no sir , well there were MANY wooden spoons used to teach me that one !!!!
Yeppers it was beat into my head !!!
hell I even say it to my kids ( 24 and 26 )

And when I meet some body I smile , give them a firm hand shake and a kind greeting .

I agree with you, Glatt, I think the "Miss" thing is a Southern thing.

well, there seems to be quite a bit of variation here on proper . . . social intercourse.

As a young girl, I remember being taught to curtsey and made to curtsey when introduced to adult strangers.

As a sign of respect, in Papua New Guinea's pigeon, Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth is referred to as "Missus Queen". Simply "Queen" would be disrespectful.
And it leaves Prince Charles as the wonderfully titled "Number-one picaninie belongem Missus Queen".

There's a whole methodology for these things in other cultures. In the part of India my family is from originally, you get called "sister" if you're the same age, "mother" if you're a little older, and "grandmother" if you're older still.

However, if it's across class lines, you get called "mother" even if you're much younger -- the gardener, a 70somthing man, would call me "mother" when I was six years old. :3_eyes:

I appreciate a little more formal courtesy that most people seem to like. Sir, Mister, Ma'am, Ms., etc. It's so easy to encroach on other people's time, space, and attention. Maybe it helps a little to make an effort at courtesy and maintaining interpersonal boundaries.

I would certainly not persist in calling someone by a title if they requested otherwise!

Oohh. I fucking love that! that's so awesome. I love creoles and pidgins. Wonderful.

Thank you, Cloud.

:tips cap:

You don't like my signature? Which one--I just changed it. If it's the Satan's Camaro thing, that's from "Transformers." If it's the "cold and shallow" thing--well, that's me.

An anthropologist/archeologist friend of mine told me the PNG pidgin for "epiphyte". I can't remember it exactly but the literal translation was "plant that lives on the side of another plant and doesn't have roots".