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Comment by farnsworth | Hacker News Reader

Only tangentially related but I think it's interesting that just as we popularized the word "Ms.", and I think it makes perfect sense not to refer to women primarily by their marital status, we sort of worked around the issue by... largely just not using title/last name anymore. Right? I don't think I've referred to anyone by a title since my grade school teachers, and at least in my industry and corner of society, it's a complete non-issue.

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Was there a time when adults referred to each other by Mr. and Mrs. in regular spoken conversation? Like if you were asking a work colleague where another colleague was, it was normal to say "Where is Mr. Smith?" rather than "Where is Mark?"

Since in my lifetime I've only known calling everyone by their first name (except, like you say, teachers in childhood), I'm curious when the change occurred and how.

There are older Americans who insist that calling a stranger by their first name is rude. That was never my culture so I was taken aback to hear this.

For some the use of the first name assumes a familiarity which probably does not exist. The universal rule is that appropriate levels of interaction are both accepted and used in common parlance by everyone. Thus it's rare for a speaker at a press conference to be addressed by their first name though the speaker might well respond using a first name if they know the journalist. 'Anthony, how did your chat with Sergey (Lavrov) go?' is not something we're likely to hear. Of course it's down to preferences with ordinary conversations as in 'please call me Joe' or whatever.

First name informality has been a feature of American culture since before its founding. We use a more formal protocol for official business. It seems controlling to insist against common practice that normal persons treat one with this kind of formality.

Not sure, but people certainly talk that way in Victorian novels (does anyone actually know Mr. Darcy’s first name? :)

Fitzwilliam.

But yes, that notwithstanding, any period drama (Downtown Abbey) will give a good indication of this.

It's an exception but latest names are still somewhat common in the army, in sports teams (even at the lowest level), and doctors. No Mr before though but rather last name as a nickname. Maybe the common denominator is a disciplined authoritative environment.

Yes. The rules were complicated, too. Children referring to adults and teachers with Mr./Ms. is a relic from what was once a more complicated set of rules about social hierarchy. Relative age, familiarity, and social status, both of the audience/listener and of the speaker relative to the referred person, were the main factors that determined the choice in how to refer to someone. The older, more socially distant, and socially superior they were to you, and the more formal the situation, the more likely you used the title. If the listener was socially distant or inferior to the party, you were more likely to refer to the party with a title. Using simply a last name without a title was also an option for a superior to an inferior. Given names were considered intimate to use alone, and reserved in private between family and close friends and sometimes close colleagues.

The change started in the '70s and it's not quite complete. More progressed in some regions than others. A couple decades ago, the manager at my first job was addressed as Mr. and it seemed quite natural to me at the time.

I can tell HN users mostly don't live in the south by the fact that they think it's so foreign to use "mr" or "ms".

Please go drive through and visit Louisiana or Alabama at some point in your life. You'll find America has a lot of variance in it's cultural norms.

> I think it makes perfect sense not to refer to women primarily by their marital status

Not in isolation, but in full context there may be some practical merit. In the earlier age where these titles were used, women adopted their husband's entire name. A woman who married Mr. Robert Smith would become Mrs. Robert Smith. This provides feedback that her given name isn't Robert. Ms. Robert Smith would be ambiguous. Is her given name actually Robert or is she married to Robert? Who knows?

But, indeed, in the modern age nobody cares about titles. We have heavily curated Instagram feeds, or whatever it is the cool kids are into these days, to serve as a status indicator instead. That's the thing about status indicators: They only serve to display status for so long until it becomes commonplace and those with status have to move on to new indicators to stand out.

Right. Except when you apply for a bank account, loan, passport, drivers license, enter a contract and so on.

There's always Mx too.

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