I recently sent an email to the editor of the London Times Literary Supplement complaining about his running a longish lead article by a lunatic-of-one-idea feminist who would cite misogyny as the explanation for the behavior of Lady Macbeth, Lucretia Borgia, and the Wicked Witch of the West. He provided a kindly, if not in the least convincing, defense in a reply that began by his addressing me by my first name.
Thirty or so years ago I had a correspondence with an earlier editor of the TLS in which, after an exchange of a dozen or so letters, he wrote: “Dear Mr. Epstein, How I wish I could, as Henry James remarked on a similar occasion, leap the bounds of formality and address you by your first name.” What elegant courtesy! “Dear John,” I wrote back, “The bounds are now leapt.” We subsequently became good friends. I may be wrong, but I don’t think the same is likely to happen with the current-day editor, who calls me Joseph right out of the gate.
As a longtime—and seldom listened to—chronicler of changes in contemporary etiquette, I have for some years now noted the increased use of addressing strangers by their first names. Years ago, explaining the depth of one’s friendship with another man or woman, one might say, “Yes, I know him well. We’re on a first-name basis.” Today one is much more likely to say, “I’ve never met Joe. What’s he like?”
When I began my career as a university teacher, I hadn’t decided whether to address my students by their first or last names. Calling the roll of 40 or so students, last names first, I came to “Pipal, Faustin,” at which an earnest redheaded boy returned, “Would you mind calling me Frosty?” My decision was made. “I address all students by their last names, Mr. Pipal,” I said. And so I did for the next 30 years of teaching.I’m not sure that there are any university teachers left who today do the same. Now, at their teachers’ request, lots of students call them by their first names. Teaching today, I can easily imagine, on the opening day of class, writing out my name and office hours on the blackboard, then turning to say, “But you can call me Frosty.”
More than half the calls I get from strangers nowadays begin by their calling me by my first name, Joseph, and not a few of these by its diminutive, Joe. Why does it tick me off, which it does, mildly? The novelist Evelyn Waugh, a famously irascible character, upon his return from a trip to Goa, wrote to his friend Nancy Mitford: “I can bear only intimacy, really, & after that formality or servility. The horrible thing is familiarity.” I am myself not big on servility, and I don’t mind formality, but I’m with Waugh on familiarity, at least when it’s unearned.
As for how familiarity is earned, I should say that it comes, like promotion in the military, with time-in-grade. Familiarity, like seduction, need not be rushed. I remember a favorite student of mine, greeting me shortly after his graduation, as Joe. “Sorry, Eric,” I replied, “but I think you need to wait at least 20 months before you may address me by my first name.” He took it well, and we later became friends. Another favorite student of mine continued to address me as Professor Epstein for at least 10 years after his graduation, even after I had long before insisted on his calling me by my first name. “Besides,” as I instructed him, “the title of professor, with which I’ve never been at all comfortable, strikes me as best restricted to the fellow who plays piano in the bordello.”
If physicians, dentists, or clergymen call me—now a man of a certain age, and then some—by my first name, I return the somewhat ambiguous compliment and call them by theirs. Sometimes people I’ve not met or dealt with before will address me by my first name in letters or emails, and I, an unobliging chap, answer by addressing them by their last names. Sometimes someone will ask me to call him by his or her first name, in which case, within limits, I do. “My personal banker,” a line from a radio commercial for a bank that wanted to establish its seriousness that sticks in my mind ran, “wants me to call him Skippy.” The president of the university where I used to teach, flaunting the democratic spirit of the day, signs his emails and correspondence “Morty.”
If a stranger calls you by your first name today, why not Ace, Chief, Mac, Pally (Dean Martin’s favorite), or Schmuckowitz tomorrow; or, if you are a woman, Honey, Doll, Sweetheart, Babe, Toots? “Familiarity breeds contempt” remains an adage with an unusually high truth quotient.
