For me as well, “Miss Jill” is for a preschool teacher. Or for a young girl when you are showing her kind of exaggerated respect. When I see my 11 yo niece, I will say “Well hello, Miss (Firstname)!” In a way that suggests I am meeting the queen! We do sometime call our daughter Miss Firstname in somewhat the same spirit. But it’s not a “serious” form of address.
I grew up calling my parents’ friends by first names. I would have been fine with that for my kids but my H was more traditional and preferred them to say Mr and Mrs X so I deferred to that.
How about “Madame”? Maybe that only works from a maitre d’ - type. I still remember on my honeymoon how pround my new Hubby was when I was referred to as Madame. (Honeymoon in Bermuda - foreign influence?)
At the nursery school my kids attended, the teachers did not want to be called “Miss Firstname”. The married ones in particular thought this offensive. They were simply “Firstname” by both child and parent. Obviously, not a Southern nursery school.
One of my closest childhood friends lost her mother as an 8 year old. Her father remarried a wonderful Southern woman who taught my friend and her younger brother to refer to the dad as “Sir” and the step-mom as “Ma’am”. I always thought that was terrific - wished it was the norm in my Mid-west family. I’m not sure why it appealed so strongly, maybe that sense of formality and respect - a precursor of my love of Downton Abbey, perhaps!
For some of our closest friends, our kids called them Uncle Firstname or Aunt Firstname. That might serve the same purpose as Miss Firstname in the south, perhaps?
Re rules, I am distinguishing between what you call someone if you actually know their name, and what you call someone when you don’t and there is no expectation of a relationship. It’s fun to hear all the different “rules” we all grew up with.
At this stage in my life, my kids’ friends who grew up with me might still say Mrs Lastname, but “new” friends - I’d say call me first name.
My H joined his father’s medical practice and my FIL was known as Dr Lastname so they started calling my H Dr Firstname to distinguish him from his father. It worked because he had sort of a Doogie Howser quality about him and didn’t look old enough to be a doctor, lol.
His patients still call him Dr Firstname. It’s kind of too twee for my taste but it’s not my decision :-). But that’s the only example I can think of. I can’t think of any other situation of calling a man Mr Firstname.
I moved from Texas to Tennessee a few years ago and yes, ma’am and yes, sir are big in both places. The thing I’ve had trouble getting used to in TN is “honey” and “sweetie” by servers and others. I don’t like it at all, especially by someone substantially younger than me. Sadly, I seem to have picked up “honey”. I have to break that habit.
I too am bothered by Miss. I am not offended in the least when someones says “excuse me ma’am”, but being from the north and while IN the north I really do not care for “yes ma’am, no ma’am or thank you ma’am”. For some reason when this is not used by a southerner, I find it a bit sassy. While in the south…I am fine with the term.
I am in the Northeast and prefer Ma’am. I’m 58. Happy to be 58. Actually I really prefer Ms but that doesn’t seem to be generally accepted. Miss to me is someone under 35. I’m still struggling with how I would like to be addressed by children under 18. I do not like to be called by my first name, especially by very young children, but Mrs. lastname seems overly formal. Miss firstname seems too young and Aunt firstname seems overly familiar.
For what it’s worth, if you go into any decent scholarly database, you’ll find hundreds of scholarly articles published on the sociolinguistics of forms of address in the English-speaking world. It probably says something that there’s been that much work on it, and it’s still not entirely understood even from a purely descriptive point of view.
When we first moved back to the south, a realtor I was working with kept ma’am-ing me. Since we were the same age and social class, it felt strange enough to me I asked a local academic friend, 25 years my senior, if there was reason for concern. He thought about it a while and said it sounded like a distancing mechanism and the question was why. I think it was because I hadn’t slowed down enough to recover my southern manners yet. Just too brusque. I was still in NE mode where southern manners tend to make people uncomfortable.
So it’s a sign of respect when applied to an elder but a distancing sign when applied to a peer? Interesting. It’s definitely a distancing sign here when applied to a peer. I can’t imagine using ma’am with a woman my age unless it were in some snarky, negative context “Excuse me, ma’am, you’re just going to have to wait your turn in line like the rest of us” comes to mind but maybe you all just say “bless your heart, ma’am, and go right ahead”!
"Her father remarried a wonderful Southern woman who taught my friend and her younger brother to refer to the dad as “Sir” and the step-mom as “Ma’am”. "
My Nicarauguan housekeeper called my husband “Mr. [First name],” both when referring to him outside his presence and in direct address. It seems pretty common in Latin American circles. (She called me by my first name, which is what I wanted her to call me.)
It really grates on my nerves when friends instruct their kids to use the “Aunt [first name]” or even worse “Auntie [first name]” form of address. I have lots of actual nephews and nieces; perhaps that’s why I don’t like it.
I call my doctors by their first names.
Don’t care for “ma’am,” “miss,” or “madam,” especially when used by unctuous waiters.
ok, Aunt / Auntie is a whole 'mother topic! To me, Auntie seems like a southern expression - particularly African American. However, my H’s family uses it (though they are neither black nor southern) - so I’m Auntie Firstname on that side and my kids call their paternal aunts Auntie Firstname - but I’m Aunt Firstname on my side and my kids call my sister Aunt Firstname. It’s kind of weird when you think about it, but it was one of those where declining to go along as Auntie would have been stirring up trouble and it wasn’t a hill to die on!
So, question for the crowd. Let’s say we all got together in a room, and our (presumably young adult) children walked in. Let’s also assume an informal setting, How would you introduce yourself / expect to be called? I would likely just go with my first name.
