Are they told to use the adult’s first name, or “Mr/Mrs/Ms last name”, or something else?
Update:
I ask because my wife and I live in America, are of Asian descent, and have our children address adults with Mr/Mrs/Ms. Our peers have their children use the adult’s first name, which we find a little disrespectful, to be honest. Perhaps we’re just old fashioned, though.
Update 2: My wife and I are in our late forties and mid-fifties, respectively.
Update 3: From the responses so far, I wonder if Europe and America have a more egalitarian view of relationships, whereas Asian cultures still have a more formalized, hierarchical view.
19 comments
In Norway, people usually address each other on a first name basis, regardless of their relationship to that person or their age. People don’t call each other Mr and Mrs/Ms X.
To put it differently, if a person’s name was “Ola Nordmann”, most people would call that person “Ola”.
Aunt and uncle mostly, if it’s the parents’ friends (or kindergarden teachers, as I’ve recently learnt). If it’s like school teachers or neighbors it’s usually Mr or Mrs with either first or last name.
In the Canary Islands and some part of Andalusia ‘usted/ustedes’ which are the formal singular and plural ‘you’ is used as default/much more than the rest of the country. I’ve always called everyone by their first name, whether they were my teachers in school or high school or my professor in college unless I was specifically told otherwise and that only happened with one professor or pretty much anyone else. We are very casual about all this
In Sweden, we are not formal at all according to many of our European friends (many of them though are as “informal” as us). Only by name and have done so for a very long time now. This informality also extends to how we communicate with our teachers. Some students are even less formal and use phrases like “you there” or “you” to address their teachers (which translates to “du” in Swedish). 😄 pretty interesting.
I have lived in the UK and it was very different but I guess it is starting to change over there a bit as well now. I can only speak for teachers over in London but yea.
By first name. It’s been like this at least since I was growing up (b.1976). I even called my parents by first name. My American father never really liked it but accepted it. It seems to have been a 1970s thing for a while, for some kids, far from all. I don’t know anyone born after me, who called/calls their parents by first name.
OT: It was so strange when I moved to the U.S. (1991-97) and I had to address my HS teachers by surname Mr/Mrs/Ms/Miss *last name* and sometimes I never learnt their first name.
Growing up in the 80s my parents’ friends and colleagues were usually called Uncle or Aunt. No idea why, but it seems to have been common in the UK in that era!
First name only.
Only grandparents and parents are called differently than their first names. (Mom, dad, grandpa, grandma) Aunts and uncles, cousins etc. only when talking about them, not with them.
Everyone else, except the royal family, is called by their first name. Something else would be very weird. Your teacher? First name or simply “you” A CEO, doctor, boss, elderly neighbour? First name.
Stranger? “You” or “Ehh, you there”
Although, small kids (preschool and grades 1-3 mostly) address their teachers simply by “fröken” (which directly translated is madame or miss, but means teacher)
Mr/Ms equivalents disappeared formally and informally many decades ago in Norway. Not that they existed informally outside the cities.
I don’t think they are a bad thing when in other countries, but it is foreign in Norway and I dont miss it.
Like anyone else, singular, first name and no honorific. Basically everyone from every age treats everyone similarly.
Aunt and Uncle FirstName was the norm growing up speaking Greek in Cyprus.
It would be simply inconceivable to address a family friend as Mr or Ms, but a bare first name would be rude too unless the age gap was very small (e.g. you are 15 and the adult is 35).
Friends of parents would either be addressed by the first name or by Mr / Mrs (without a name) depending on how well they know them. I don’t think most children would even know the last names of their parents’ friends.
Teachers are usually first name in primary school, last name in secondary school.
German here. There’s a polite form of addressing people, which is addressing them in plural („Sie“, comparable to „Vou“ in French or „usted“ in spanish). The practice is called „Siezen“ and is used in connection with the last name.
[here’s a blog post explaining the concept](https://blogs.transparent.com/german/the-german-you-duzen-und-siezen/)
Personally, I was taught to always go for „Sie“ with elders or authorities until they allowed me to use the informal form of „Du“. I mostly still keep to this rule.
There’s a nice in-between form, called „Hamburger Du“ (as in Hamburg, the City, not the food ;-)) where you adress a person with first name but other than that go by „Sie“. I like that a lot but it’s not used very often anymore.
My grandparents insisted on being addressed with „Sie“ and her last name by my friends.
But most commonly, parents of other children offer „Du“ in the first interaction and you get some good-boy-points for using „Sie“ first. 😇
I was born in 1992 btw
Portuguese here. Depends on the family and how close they are to the person, but usually by their first name paired with the formal you. In posh families/surroundings kids call adults aunt/uncle and use the formal you.
When talking to teachers, we usually use the formal you and call them “professor/a” (or a more informal “stor/a”.
By first name, generally. Kids might refer to their grandparents just by mummo/pappa (or other variants; grandma/grandpa respectively). I’m mid-thirties, and when I was a kid it was also pretty common to say aunt x or uncle y (x-täti, y-setä), but as far as I’ve observed this is rare now.
We used aunt/uncle [first name] for some good friends of my parents, and just first name for others. My parents are also in their mid-50s.
I also have aunts/uncles that I address solely by their first name btw: the uncles that were still <18 when my oldest brother was born. And when they eventually married the practice got extended to their wives as well.
I’m trying to imagine calling people like my parents’ friends or my friends’ parents by Ms/Mr Lastname and it just feels very strangely formal. It’s normal for authority figures (like secondary school teachers), and it’s expected that kids who don’t know you address you as mister/miss, but for people who you know and aren’t in some sort of hierarchical relationship with it just feels weird even if you are a kid.
Germany.
I think we’re all pretty formally raised here, elders are addressed by the formal form “Sie” which is considered respectful. This obviously excludes your family. This is practiced until one of the parties offers the “du” which is the way that families & friends normally address each other. It’s most commonly used, I think. Often the “Du” is offered very early in interactions, especially with the parents of your friends, normally they introduce themselves with their first name.
I think I called most of my parents name by their sure name and with “Herr/Frau” until they offered me to call them by their first name. Then I would address them with “Du”
That was normal with friends that I visited frequently, not so much with those I would see only once in a while and their parents even less.
There are a few ways you can change the grammar which allows you to use neither “Sie” nor “Du” which is what I commonly practice when I don’t know how to address someone. It’s kinda like instead of asking “could you please hand me x” saying “could I have x, please”
When we were kids, we used signor/signora (Mr/Mrs) + first name, unless some of them (mostly younger or closer family friends) explicitly asked to use their first name only.
Nowadays, my friends’ children call me by my first name, and sometimes zio (uncle) + first name
By first name. I can’t think of an instance where I would call someone Mr/Ms. Growing up your teacher is not Mr/Ms, you just use their first name. Same with your boss or your boss’ boss and so on.
In Danish we do have a formal way of addressing someone, but it fell out of use many decades ago.
In Finland everyone is called by their first name.
Teachers, parents, doctors, superiors at work.
The only ones who I would consider calling Mr/Mrs are our president Sauli Niinistö and our prime minister Sanna Marin.
Respect for other people has nothing to do with what words you use but how you say them and how you act.
Also not everyone who is senior or in a superior position deserves respect. I’d argue that the happiest societies are the ones with least hierarchy.