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Last Name Basis / Real Life

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Examples of Last-Name Basis in Real Life.


  • Not at all uncommon in many British schools (especially in all-male situations such as PE), and not just the posh public schools that the stereotype tends to suggest, either.
  • In most educational settings, students are commonly expected to address teachers, administrators — and to a lesser extent, support staff — by a courtesy title (Mr., Mrs. or Miss), administrative title (Principal or Superintendent), Coach, or Dr. (if they have a doctorate degree of some sort) and their surname, especially in the classroom. Sometimes, teachers will allow them to use a shortened last name (e.g., "Mrs. K" for Krabappel) if it is long or cumbersome to use. Sometimes, teachers and faculty will do this to each other as well when students are present.
    • In the Vietnamese educational system, teachers are referred to as "thầy" (male teacher) + first name, or "cô" (female teacher) + first name, regardless of their qualifications. When rank/degrees are taken into account, it's usually in formal situations and in the form of, for example: "Principal [Full Name]/Doctor [Full Name] was awarded X Prize." Vietnamese society is mostly on a First-Name Basis due to the homogeneity of surnames. Students being rude would simply call teachers by their first names without any honorifics.
  • Clergymen, except for their closest friends and family, often expect their parishioners to refer to them by their title (e.g., "Pastor," "Reverend," "Rabbi," etc.) and their last name, although some are fine with people using the first name in combination with their title (e.g., "Pastor Dan").
  • Children are generally expected to refer to adults who aren't their parents by their last name with Mr./Ms./Mrs./etc unless told that they are allowed to refer to them by their first name.
  • In business relationships, where the customer service representative was speaking with a client they did not otherwise have an established relationship with (previous or personal), they might be expected to call them "Mr." or "Mrs.," or short of that, sir or ma'am. Also, in some businesses or companies, subordinate workers might be asked — at least initially — to refer to their superiors by Mr. or Mrs., although many are informal enough that they are allowed to call their supervisors and bosses by first name almost immediately.
  • In the courtroom, in addition to attorneys referring to adult litigants, witnesses and defendants (and sometimes, minors over a certain age) by a courtesy title and last name, everyone is expected to refer to judges as "Your Honor" or, short of that, "Judge (last name)." Similarly, in Commonwealth countries, the address is "M'Lud" or "M'Lady" and "Mister Justice [surname]" or "Madam Justice [surname]". Erroneously addressing a judge otherwise may earn a stern reprimand to a contempt of court citation, although for children a gentle reminder is all that's needed.
  • Standard practice in all armed forces around the world.
  • A vast majority of political figures are referred mainly by their last name, unless they get some kind of nickname (e.g. JFK).
    • The main exceptions to this being some female politicians and political legacies whose last names aren't distinctive enough (Hillary Clinton, almost universally referred to as "Hillary", is an example of both). Saddam Hussein was almost always referred to as "Saddam," initially to avoid confusion with King Hussein of Jordan.
    • In an extreme example, Abraham Lincoln was just Lincoln, even when around his friends and family. Ironically, he's commonly referred to nowadays by his first name, or just Honest Abe.
  • This is more often than not the case in the United States military. It can lead to confusion with common last names, however, so the form of address may be modified to "Rank Last Name" in units were there is more than one soldier with the same last name, or an appropriate informal title such as Top, Gunny or Chief may be substituted.
    • This is probably so in EVERY military in the world, where you are only "allowed" to refer to others by first name within your own or a lower rank group. Also, last names are usually visible on the uniform, so you hear the last names of your comrades frequently and place them to faces more easily.
      • Not the case in the IDF. Israelis are generally very, very informal, speaking to complete strangers their age with the language they’d use for a close friend. This is a bit toned down in the army, but even then soldiers sometimes refer to their direct commanders by their first name.
    • In the Army, the Last Name rule is less common among the commissioned officer ranks, where a superior officer often calls peers and subordinates by their first name. Enlisted soldiers are told to stick with last names, as an unofficial rule. Note that the rule never applies when speaking to a superior: use their title only.
      • In most of the US military, it is always more polite to address a superior officer as "sir" or "ma'am" than by any specific title, with the exception of generals, who should be addressed as "general".
    • Part of this stems from the ideal of professionalism; part of it is because during basic training, nobody in charge really cares about your first name.
    • In the Canadian Armed Forces, you refer to an equal or lesser ranked Non-Commissioned Member by their last name and a higher-ranked NCM by their rank, unless that NCM is a Master Warrant Officer or Chief Warrant Officer in which case you call them sir or ma'am. Officers are always referred to as either sir or ma'am. However most units subvert this when they're not training and not within view of the public or higher-ups, and allow first-name basis for even the higher ranks.
  • In cultures where First-Name Basis is normal, a person with a common first name but an uncommon last name might be addressed on Last-Name Basis by their friends and peers, just because it's a more distinctive name. Or because it sounds cooler.
  • The Norwegian explorer Nansen famously suggested to his companion Johansen, after weeks of sharing a sleeping bag to survive an arctic winter, that they should start using each other's first names.
  • Almost universal in sports, where announcers and coaches will refer to the players almost exclusively using their last names. Even some teammates will refer to one another in a Last-Name Basis. In the overwhelming vast majority of cases only the last name appears on the player's uniform: there has been, for instance, only one exception in all of Major League Baseball in the 21st century (Ichiro Suzuki, who originally used his first name in Japan due to both "Ichiro" and "Suzuki" being very common names in Japan as well as his own do-my-own-thing personality which he could only get away with because he was that good at baseball).
  • AP Style for news writing dictates that, after the first mention of someone in an article, all other references use only their last name. You can break this rule if there are multiple people in the story with the same last name, whether they're related or unrelated.
  • Most Koreans refer to each other by title, title + surname, or a generic family term like "Auntie" or "Grandma", unless they are close, and sometimes not even then. Additionally, addressing a Korean as "Surname + ssi" is extremely rude if they don't happen to work for you, that being how subordinates are addressed. It's also very common for Koreans to address each other by their full names, in part because almost all Korean names are only three syllables long (this last is also true in most of China, whose name-pattern Korean borrowed some time after the Three Kingdoms period).
  • In Holland, at least in the East region of Twente, it's not unusual for people to call them by their last name as a greeting.
  • It was a common practice in the 1800s to refer to the oldest of multiple sisters by "Miss [surname]" and all younger sisters as "Miss [first name]".
  • An unusual academic example: at St John's College, students refer to each other by honorific and last name in class, and often in non-academic situations, with the result that many people are ignorant of the first names of fellow students they see every day.
  • Longtime San Francisco TV news anchor Fred Van Amburg billed himself as just Van Amburg later in his career.
  • Dr. (Benjamin) Spock
  • Colonel (Harland) Sanders (founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken)
  • Stand-up comedian Christopher Titus, with a few exceptions, has gone by his last name since at least high school. Also, at least one album has just used "Titus" on the front cover.
  • The historical scientist (Nicolaus) Copernicus.
  • World War One hero Sergeant (Alvin C.) Yorknote .
  • Last-Name Basis is Truth in Television for many non-Anglophone cultures; in Latin America it's not uncommon to see close friends calling each other by their last names, and standard practice in Japan, combined with Japanese Honorifics. First name + honorific is more intimate, and yobisute (null honorific) even more so, albeit this is mostly exclusive for either Japanese or other East Asians from the Sinosphere (Chinese, Koreans, Thais, Vietnamese, etc) but not for either Westerners, Africans, or West Asians (Arabs, Jews, Indians, Pakistanis, Nepalis, people from the Former Asian Soviet states, etc).
  • Also Truth in Television for shows set in historical times (before about 1945 in North America and 1980 in the UK). In Regency England, for instance, first names were only used by adults when addressing children (and parents when addressing their own children, even if they were adults), and among siblings or very close female friends. Husbands and wives only addressed each other by their first names when alone: in public or even amongst their family, they often referred to each other more formally. In many ways, the use of the first name became the English-language version of the French tutoyer, as if addressing someone by their first name without a good reason showed that you didn't see them as your equal. While modern Americans see using the first name as friendly and egalitarian, someone from this time frame would see it as pushy, rude, and intrusive.
  • Truth in Television as a distinguishing factor for those with the same first name.
  • Late Night Talk Show hosts are usually referred to by their last names, such as Letterman, Leno, Kimmel, Fallon, Colbert, and so on. Arsenio Hall and Conan O'Brien are notable exceptions and even borderline inversions, mainly due to their uncommon names in comparison to the rest.
  • Ironically, even where using last names is a sign of respect, some positions can be so exalted that the trope gets inverted and only the first name gets used: monarchs, for example. (Even without the title, people routinely speak of "Elizabeth II" with no disrespect, but someone who calls her "Mrs. Windsor" is definitely making a point.) Another example is knighthood: Sir Patrick Stewart, for example, is properly addressed not as "Sir Stewart" but as "Sir Patrick."
    • A varied rule applies to noble titles, where the surname address is used, unless the noble title comes with a different name (usually a place name associated with the person, such as the 1st Viscount of Alamein). For instance, Christopher Guest is "Lord Hayden-Guest" (his full surname is Hayden-Guest), as the 5th Baron Hayden-Guest. However, Max Aitken was "Lord Beaverbrook" as the 1st Baron Beaverbrook.

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