Wednesday 12 April 2023
Elementary my dear Watson
It was during these passages that to my intense astonishment Tolefree called me by my Christian name. He prefaced some odd remark, “I say, Jim——” He had not done it before in the more than ten years of our friendship; but, as I had never known him to stray from the path of custom out of sheer perversity, I played up to his lead and got out a “Philip” now and then—with difficulty.
R.A.J. Walling - More Than One Serpent (1938)
It is common for characters in novels of this period to refer to friends by their surname, particularly professional people. As we know, Sherlock Holmes always referred to Dr John Watson as ‘Watson’, not ‘John’.
In the above quote, Walling uses the strength of this social convention to allow covert signalling between two friends. Two male friends of course - it would not have worked as well between two female friends.
At my boys only secondary school in the sixties it was all surnames even between classmates. Family members and close friends we’d call by their Christian names, but not so much beyond those circles. At Grandson’s secondary school, teachers call pupils by their Christian names which sounds too familiar to my old ears.
Shifting social conventions I suppose, one of those things we comply with without much thought. Until woke culture came along and susceptible people were encouraged to make personal demands on each other, including friends and family. Time to go back to surnames perhaps.
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12 comments:
It was always Christian names at our school, but still, anybody you didn't know would use your surname: Mr Bucko
These days it seems that everyone wants to be over familliar. Police, call centres, Google, Microsoft outlook, they all go for first names.
My particular bugbear is software being overly familliar, or even speaking to you like a child. "Oops, something went wrong"
What went wrong? Tell me, don't just say oops
What about a mix of the old and the new, as in:
"Blenkinsop (Xhe, Xhir)" ?
I used to work for a company with a German subsidiary - got used to all the Frau(lein) this and Herr that in the German office but since the global parent was American, elsewhere it was all first names.
One day a German colleague referred to another German colleague as 'Gunter' instead of 'Herr Wagner'. I queried this, and his response was - 'well, we used to play football together and I have seen him naked in the shower'.
Like you I grew up in a world of surnames.
I reached the sixth year at school without evening knowing the Christian names of almost all my acquaintances - one or two closest friends excepted; even then it felt a bit silly.
An interesting wrinkle was that whereas I was known simply as "MacFarlane", my younger brother on arrival at the school just became "MacFarlane's brother"; but as soon as I left school, the labels reversed: he became MacFarlane, and I - if I returned for a concert or something - immediately became "MacFarlane's brother".
The past is a different country, etc...
We always used Christian names or nicknames at school. At university, though, we often used surnames instead, at least part of the time, when referring to absent people - but not to their face, unless it was a nickname constructed from the surname.
I can remember only once receiving a letter addressed to "Dear Smith" (as it were); it was from an administrator notorious for being old-fashioned if not downright reactionary. I found it slightly odd but not at all offensive. Naturally I replied in the same style.
Bucko - I agree, "Oops, something went wrong" is childish and there is a lot of it about. Maybe we'll see something similar if global cooling sets in.
Sam - I'd just stick with the old, especially with a name like Blenkinsop which is too delightfully traditional to mess around with.
Shiney - I like the formality of Frau(lein) this and Herr that. My wife used to have a German friend who always addressed her husband by his surname if other people were present, but that sounded a little too formal to me.
Peter - I knew the Christian names of most of my school acquaintances, but I'd still have to think about it in many cases because we didn't use them. On reflection, I'm sure there were one or two I never did know. We had twin brothers in one class and they were known by their Christian and surnames to distinguish them.
dearieme - very occasionally we receive computer generated correspondence addressed in a "Dear Smith" manner. I'll now think of it as generated by reactionary robot with pince-nez.
At my prep school in the early 80s it was all surnames and they were still using Ma and Mi (as in Major and Minor) to distinguish boys of the same name. It wasn't a big school so it wasn't often there were more than 2 of the same name, but if there was a third the youngest got Min after his name, standing for Minimus. I was Sobers Ma in my last year IIRC. It all seems a long time ago, and several worlds removed from ours today.........
Sobers - I feel like that too, it does seem a long time ago. In human terms it isn't, but something has changed radically, or rather something has been lost.
Maybe you chaps went to school with strangers. Some of the boys in my final year at secondary school I'd known since we were in Nursery School together. It would have been bonkers to stop calling them Jimmy or Bobby and swap to Crawford or McPherson.
dearieme - in my first year of secondary school, most were strangers, but I think we also took our cue from the way things were done, how others addressed each other.
Like Sobers , my Prep school was surnames and as a Jones I started life as a minimus but at our school you worked through minor and majo and r in my last year I arrived at Jones with no added moniker . It was a great moment to see it on all my books etc . My Public School was different just , my surname and initials but we did Navigation for O level not Latin so maybe they thought nobody would understand the words .
As an aside my father used to say that his marriage went downhill when he foolishly allowed my mother to call him by his Christian name !
Mike - that's an interesting aside. I wonder if a more formal relationship within marriage would have reduced the number of failed marriages. Maybe expectations would be lower and less likely to be disappointing.
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