Third Person Person / Real Life

• Douglas MacArthur did not simply refer to himself as Doug, oh no. He preferred his last name, MacArthur.
• Many Indian mystics, including Ma Yoga Laxmi, Swami Ramdas, and Anandamayi Ma referred to themselves in the third person for spiritual reasons.
• Frankly, Bob Dole can't believe nobody's mentioned Bob Dole yet, and Bob Dole is very angry about that.
  • Spoofed by the Bob Dole look-alike "Dell Monte" on an episode of Pinky and the Brain.
  • Also spoofed by The Simpsons on more than one occasion.
    "Maybe Bob Dole should run. Bob Dole thinks Bob Dole should run. Actually, Bob Dole just likes to hear Bob Dole talk about Bob Dole. Bob Dole!"
  • Also on Futurama.
    Bob Dole's head: "Bob Dole needs company. LaRouche won't stop with the Knock Knock Jokes."
  • Dole later claimed he did this because he felt the persona he had to affect while campaigning wasn't anything like the real Bob Dole. Kinda sad, really, especially considering it failed anyway.
  • Spoofed one time on Family Guy.
    "Bob Dole is the friend of the tobacco industry. Bob Dole likes your style. Bob Dole... Bob Dole... Bob Dole... Bob Dole... Bob Dole... Bob Dole... Bob Dole... Bob Dole (falls asleep)"
  • Saturday Night Live made it a Running Gag throughout his presidential campaign in The '90s.
    • Dole himself appeared after the failure of his campaign to talk to his SNL impersonator Norm Macdonald, in the process mocking his own tendency to do this.
  • Late Night with Conan O'Brien also made this a Running Gag.
• The same has been said about Alain Delon. Lampshaded in the movie Astérix aux Jeux Olympiques, where Alain Delon is playing the role of Caesar.
• Brigitte Bardot was known for such a habit.
• According to some sources, Gina Lollobrigida also had this penchant.
• The actress and brilliant inventor Hedy Lamarr also tended to refer to herself in the third person, at least according to her 2010 bio Hedy Lamarr: The Most Beautiful Woman in Film.
• A standard literary practice when most of the Biblical Old Testament was written. New Testament books that are not letters written in direct address use this as well (at least, most Bible scholars believe that John refers to himself when mentioning "the disciple whom Jesus loved"). For that matter, Jesus often referred to Himself as "The Son of Man" while prophesying. Some Christian scholars believe it was actually a title he used to establish himself as THE Christ and the son of, not just any man but THE man, God himself. This is, of course, subject to a great deal of interpretation.
• Can you smell what The Rock is cooking!?
• Any number of professional athletes qualify for this trope — Bo knows that Bo Jackson was an early example, and (as with any narcissistic trope) Terrell Owens leaps to mind.
  • "This is Rickey, calling on behalf of Rickey." — Allegedly, the beginning of a message left by Major League Baseball Hall-of-Famer Rickey Henderson. David Cross spoofed the hell out of this one.
    • Everyone anxiously awaited Rickey's Hall of Fame induction speech in 2009 to see how many times he'd refer to himself in the third person. He stuck to first person the entire time.
  • Karl Malone would rather have people remember Karl Malone for being #2 on the NBA's all-time scoring list than for Karl Malone's constant use of this trope, among other examples of Karl Malone's unique command of the English language. Spoofed again, this time by Jimmy Kimmel on The Man Show.
  • In football/soccer, Pelé uses this a lot. As did Zlatan Ibrahimović, especially in his early career.
• Texas songwriter/humorist/politician Richard S. "Kinky" "the Kinkster" Friedman is known for referring to himself in the third person, though it's tongue-in-cheek on his part.
• "Comrade Stalin has been told that" Comrade Stalin often spoke in third person. Comrade Stalin also enjoyed quoting Comrade Stalin, in this form.
• Rahman "Rock" Harper, the winner of the third season of the U.S. version of Hell's Kitchen, referred to himself nigh-exclusively as "Rock".
• Miss Manners refers to Miss Manners in the third person. Judith Martin, the writer of the column, originally presented herself as Miss Manners's "amanuensis".
• Joe Biden sometimes refers to Joe Biden in the third person when discussing Joe Biden's past political accomplishments.
  "I'm Joe Biden, and I'm running for the United States Senate, and I would really appreciate your support, but if you don't like me, then vote for the other Biden."
  -Joe Biden at a 2020 presidential campaign rally
• Occasionally comes up in cases of Alter-Ego Acting, where the third person and first person may refer to different people. Conversations can get complicated.
• The group game Silent Football requires its players to call the other players by their proper names, as pronouns are considered insulting and dehumanizing. Accordingly, many players choose to speak in third person so as not to dehumanize themselves. (In some versions of the game, third person is required.)
• Marines' boot camps require new inductees to refer to themselves as "this recruit", instead of "me" or "I", in order to break the trainee from himself and force him to think as part of a group instead of as an individual.
• Julius Caesar's autobiographical Commentaries on the Gallic War and The Civil War are written in this fashion. Despite (or perhaps because of) having an ego roughly the size of the Campus Martius, Caesar chose third person to disguise his heavily biased propaganda efforts as balanced, dispassionate histories. As a result, fictional portrayals often have him do this while speaking (such as Shakespeare's Julius Caesar).
• Followed in all these respects by Les Mémoires by Napoléon Bonaparte.
• Referring to self as a third person is rather an etiquette rule in Bahasa Indonesia when said self is older than the person who they share a conversation with. Mostly parents to children.
  • In fact, this is a rather common practice with many East Asian/Southeast Asian cultures and languages.
• In Thailand, it is extremely common to refer to oneself using their nickname as pronoun, and there's not even a set rule. Elder to younger, younger to elder, among friends, among couples, among family members, etc. The only rule seems to be only one or two-syllable nicknames are used. Referring to oneself's first name or full name is still odd. Note that this is all in informal situations, and in formal situations you naturally revert to pronouns.
• Interpreters. They speak about someone else (the speaker) in the first person, and when said speaker speaks about the interpreter, they have to say that in third person.
• Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya seemed to be this for a time.
• Some autistic (spectrum) people do this.
• Wolfman, a DJ for KMAJ in Topeka, Kansas, not to be confused with Wolfman Jack, who also does this, will usually refer to himself in the third person, except when pointing out that he's the Wolfman.
  "If the Wolfman says you suck, you suck. So there, you suck."
• Averted and avoided in Spanish, especially in the Mexican dialect, because it's normally associated with people with serious mental problems, especially developmental disorders. In Spanish-speaking media, it's used as shorthand for a character being intellectually disabled, and in Real Life it's normally used for bullying purposes. Hence, it's been considered discriminatory language.
  • Ecuador's President Abdalá Bucaram always refers to himself as "Bucaram", in public at least. He was impeached and removed from office for psychiatric reasons.
  • However Plaza Sésamo keeps Elmo's third-person talk intact. The same goes for the Spanish dub of Spy X Family with Anya. Keep in mind, both of these were produced in Mexico.
• Apparently Oda Nobunaga had a habit of doing this—or, at least, he's depicted as doing so in many depictions of him.
• Parents do this with their children when saying things like "Mommy's here."
• Donald Trump often does this, especially when talking about his businesses.
• Salvador Dalí referred to himself as Dalí, all the time—in his videos, at least.
• This is a Verbal Tic very common among people who speak Vietnamese as a foreign language. Instructors from other regions might also use this with new learners to alleviate the fact that Vietnamese pronouns are very complicated, and then teach how to use pronouns appropriate to the region later on. Many Vietnamese celebrities, especially singers with virtually no exceptions, and young girls, use their name as a substitute for the words for "I/me", and may optionally use others' names for "you". The teen show Nhật ký Vàng Anh ("Vàng Anh's Diary"), the Vietnamese version of the Portuguese show O Diário de Sofia ("Sofia's Diary") and almost a propaganda mouthpiece aimed at teens, even dedicated a whole episode to protesting the use of the "kinship pronouns" tôi ("I/me"), ông ("male you", literally "grandpa/Mr./Sir") and bà ("female you", literally "grandma/Mrs./Ma'am") and promoting of a "name-based" approach of addressing, whereby you only use each other's name when you're talking to your fellow teens.
• Jared Padalecki and (to a lesser extent) Jensen Ackles have started doing this in interviews and panels starting in later seasons of Supernatural, apparently to make it absolutely clear that they're talking about themselves as actual real people, and not about the characters they played for fifteen years.
• The Chinese phrase 人家 translates literally as "the person who lives at this house" but is always used to refer to oneself, and in both real life and fiction can be heard from children and adults trying to act cute, being flirtatious, or asking for something they suspect will be refused.
• Occasionally used in some fields of psychology, where a therapist might urge the client to describe scenarios in this matter so that the client will be better able to objectively analyze their behavior.
• Procedural rules in some situations can lead to this, as they may require a speaker to present information according to a given script in which the individual being spoken about is referred to in the third person, even if it's that same person doing the speaking. For example, when United States Vice President Kamala Harris had to announce the appointment of a group of new Senators, said group included Alex Padilla, who was appointed to fill the Senate seat she vacated to become Vice President, meaning that she had to announce him as being there "to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of former senator Kamala D. Harris of California".
  Harris: Yeah, that was very weird. OK.
• Old-fashioned formal engraved invitations, and polite responses thereto, are written in the third person as a rule, using full names and applicable honorifics for all named persons.

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