The Lady Guide to Modern Manners:26 April
Dear Thomas,
I do dislike being called by my first name by people I don’t know, especially with manic insistence, about six times over, at the doctor’s reception. Am I just too old-fashioned?
Marcia Dunkerley, Ashford, Kent
Dear Marcia,
Yes, you are old-fashioned. It’s first names as far as the eye can see these days and, as you say, relentlessly repeated – all in the cause of stamping out stuffy formality and snobbery. When I was a child in the 1960s, there were still people about, bosom friends for centuries, who addressed each other as ‘Mrs Cathcart-Wilson’ and ‘Mrs Courtney-Wildman’. The mothers of one’s friends were very wary of referring to their husbands by anything so intimate as their first names. Strange formulations would emerge: ‘Adam’s father’ was a favourite (Adam being my little friend) or even ‘Major Bager’. Friends of one’s parents were either pretend aunts and uncles or even ‘Mr’ and ‘Mrs’ to mere children.
Somehow, looking back, this was all rather frosty and off-putting. But beneath the surface, were people less friendly or less kind to children because they refrained from first names? A common misunderstanding is that it was a class issue: the lower orders had to show respect for toffs, who simply bellowed, ‘Out of the way, Nobody, or I’ll run you over.’ In very grand circles this might have been the case, but among goodly middle-class people it was more to do with age. If your cleaning lady (I’m sorry but there weren’t any cleaning men in those days) was the same age as you, you were on ‘Mrs’ and ‘Mrs’ terms. If she was a young slip of a thing fresh out of cleaning school, you might call her ‘Minnie’, while she would call you ‘Mrs Pembury-Jones’.
Hard now to turn back the clock. The first-name regime is supreme. But don’t we have any choice? Our names are our own, after all. I do dislike it when my first name is used relentlessly as part of a marketing or PR drive. I dislike it even more when they’ve found it out from my credit card or some form or other. I don’t know what happens in hospitals these days. When my cousin was training as a nurse in the early 1980s, she would rightly point out to her colleagues that the older patients would probably not care to be addressed by their first name.
In all forms of social life, first names are inescapable, which does mean often that you don’t know who people are when they’ve just been introduced as ‘Will’ and ‘Matt’ and ‘Connie’. Elsewhere, I may be wrong, but is the message getting through that most of us, when at the doctor’s or on the phone to the leccie people, would really prefer to be called nothing at all?
Please send your questions to Thomas.blaikie@lady.co.uk or write to him at The Lady, 39-40 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9ER
Not so long ago, my friend, Prince Dmitri Hersov, went to a weekend-long stag party in Bournemouth. They had to do an assault course, crawl through drains, swing on ropes and whirl pieces of wood above their heads. It was ghastly. They dined in a log cabin and ate hog roast. The hen party often involves a male stripper, impossible heels, no proper overcoat and endless mix-ups over minicabs – you’re well out of it.
On the other hand, a joint hen/stag celebration sounds entirely novel. I thought the whole point of such events was for the separate parties to have one last mad dash before sealing the fateful contract and arranging the lawn-mowing rota. Maybe this joint effort bodes well for the marriage.
Maybe it heralds some new kind of looser arrangement.
Whatever the case, for once we can be quite clear: the hen or stag is strictly friends only. Older rellies personae non gratae, absolutely
I do dislike being called by my first name by people I don’t know, especially with manic insistence, about six times over, at the doctor’s reception. Am I just too old-fashioned?
Marcia Dunkerley, Ashford, Kent
Dear Marcia,
Yes, you are old-fashioned. It’s first names as far as the eye can see these days and, as you say, relentlessly repeated – all in the cause of stamping out stuffy formality and snobbery. When I was a child in the 1960s, there were still people about, bosom friends for centuries, who addressed each other as ‘Mrs Cathcart-Wilson’ and ‘Mrs Courtney-Wildman’. The mothers of one’s friends were very wary of referring to their husbands by anything so intimate as their first names. Strange formulations would emerge: ‘Adam’s father’ was a favourite (Adam being my little friend) or even ‘Major Bager’. Friends of one’s parents were either pretend aunts and uncles or even ‘Mr’ and ‘Mrs’ to mere children.
Somehow, looking back, this was all rather frosty and off-putting. But beneath the surface, were people less friendly or less kind to children because they refrained from first names? A common misunderstanding is that it was a class issue: the lower orders had to show respect for toffs, who simply bellowed, ‘Out of the way, Nobody, or I’ll run you over.’ In very grand circles this might have been the case, but among goodly middle-class people it was more to do with age. If your cleaning lady (I’m sorry but there weren’t any cleaning men in those days) was the same age as you, you were on ‘Mrs’ and ‘Mrs’ terms. If she was a young slip of a thing fresh out of cleaning school, you might call her ‘Minnie’, while she would call you ‘Mrs Pembury-Jones’.
Hard now to turn back the clock. The first-name regime is supreme. But don’t we have any choice? Our names are our own, after all. I do dislike it when my first name is used relentlessly as part of a marketing or PR drive. I dislike it even more when they’ve found it out from my credit card or some form or other. I don’t know what happens in hospitals these days. When my cousin was training as a nurse in the early 1980s, she would rightly point out to her colleagues that the older patients would probably not care to be addressed by their first name.
In all forms of social life, first names are inescapable, which does mean often that you don’t know who people are when they’ve just been introduced as ‘Will’ and ‘Matt’ and ‘Connie’. Elsewhere, I may be wrong, but is the message getting through that most of us, when at the doctor’s or on the phone to the leccie people, would really prefer to be called nothing at all?
Please send your questions to Thomas.blaikie@lady.co.uk or write to him at The Lady, 39-40 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9ER
WHAT TO DO… when you’re not invited to a party
I hear from the Chandler’s Ford neighbourhood that grannies and other older relations are furious over their exclusion from what is to be a joint hen/stag do. Surely, general rejoicing all round?Not so long ago, my friend, Prince Dmitri Hersov, went to a weekend-long stag party in Bournemouth. They had to do an assault course, crawl through drains, swing on ropes and whirl pieces of wood above their heads. It was ghastly. They dined in a log cabin and ate hog roast. The hen party often involves a male stripper, impossible heels, no proper overcoat and endless mix-ups over minicabs – you’re well out of it.
On the other hand, a joint hen/stag celebration sounds entirely novel. I thought the whole point of such events was for the separate parties to have one last mad dash before sealing the fateful contract and arranging the lawn-mowing rota. Maybe this joint effort bodes well for the marriage.
Maybe it heralds some new kind of looser arrangement.
Whatever the case, for once we can be quite clear: the hen or stag is strictly friends only. Older rellies personae non gratae, absolutely