Naming Conventions
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
Starting from kindergarten, I addressed all of my teachers by their first name. Of course, this was in Beverly Hills in the early 1990s, at an extraordinarily elite (and that’s putting it mildly) elementary school. The kind where you get on the waiting list as soon as you know you’re pregnant.
It was a very forward-thinking institution, and was dedicated to culture, intellectualism, and perhaps most, diversity. I knew nothing about racial tension while I was there. With no offense intended or implied, my three best friends were a black, a Jap, and a Jew. But I didn’t know that as a child. They were just my three best friends, in various sizes and shapes and colors.
This school prided itself by raising children as little adults, with a solid sense of self-confidence, which could almost be construed as entitlement, but not in the spoiled, privileged way. Rather, the children all possessed educated opinions and felt free to impart their views, no matter how old they themselves were or how old the other person might be. We grew up knowing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we had reason to be heard and the right to ask questions. A similar phenomenon is discussed in Malcolm Gladwell’s recent book, Outliers.
Then, in fourth grade, we relocated to Austin, Texas. Suddenly, I was stuck in dim-lit dungeon with old, mean Mrs. Hopper, who had to grant you a frog-shaped laminate cut-out in order to be permitted to the powder room. I had never had to address an adult by their last name before, and I had certainly had never had to have an adult “allow” me to go to the bathroom. I found myself in some sort of alternate universe, where the textbooks were practically primitive, the children were clear subordinates of adults, and where all the faces were white.
On my first day, Mrs. Hopper seated me at desk with a cubby, and proceeded to say to the class with a deep Southern twang: “All right y’all, we’re fixing to do some reading, turn yer books to page 42.” I went home to my mother in outright indignation. How was this woman supposed to teach us English when she can’t even speak it?
Fast forward to my senior year of high school. Well, sort of.
I was merely a tourist. I got fed up with the public school system in sixth grade, and refused to go back. Luckily, my greatly supportive parents allowed me to self-school myself from seventh until tenth grade, when I graduated from high school two years early. I made the decision to go to “real” high school afterward, because it seemed like an important, invaluable bonding experience, that I would need someday around a water cooler.
I took a class with Mr. Martin, who was favorably nick-named by all students and staff as “Doc Martin.” He only taught class at “zero-hour,” which meant getting to school an hour early, before anybody else. And thus proved his popularity; I’m not sure what else could convince a bunch of high school seniors to get out of bed before they had to.
For the first time in my life, I was “Sconyers,” not merely “Melissa.”
Everyone in class learned out to pronounce my name correctly, with the ‘c’ acting as a hard ‘k.’ Doc Martin encouraged us to be opinionated, to be assertive, even to be interruptive. In many ways, I felt like I developed, or at least deepened, a new personna in that class room.
Still, to this day, I feel a bond with those classmates. Now, when we message each other on Facebook every so often, we still address each other by our last names. They’re always be Buckmann, Fann, or Galloway to me. They, too, admit that they’ll always know me in this way, in an almost sheepish manner. After all these years, is it silly to stick to something so subtle?
In college, I had a prim, proper professor who positively could only called by his full, official title (”Dr. Cox”), and I had an alternative, bohemian, feminist professor who insisted on being called by her first name (”Alison,” or “Alliterative Alison,” as per our name game on the first day). A few other of my treasured professors insisted that I call them by their first them after I was no longer in their classes, but I affectionately, purposefully, respectfully continued to call them by what I considered to be their name: Madame Lippmann, Professor Boretz, and Dr. Kushner, a.k.a Dr. K.
This personal preference was only strengthened by my time in China, where “teacher” translates roughly to “old master,” and is a coveted and commanded term of respect. Years after I’m no longer their student, and even though they’ve become friends and fixtures in my life, I’ll never be able to call them by anything else, but Ai Laoshi, Meng Laoshi, Yang Laoshi. Save for one: Camilla.
After I graduated, my first job was at a grand, global, glamorous advertising agency, where I ascertained that ole Doc Martin was right. I transformed into “Sconyers” again, and my colleagues were people like Goldberg, Stout, Clement.
A few days ago, I unintentionally offended somebody by referring to them by their last name only. I didn’t think twice about it, specifically since in my prior positions, it was a clear, formal form of respect to call each other by our last names. I apologized and explained. But it got me thinking.
What’s in a name? I answer to so many names. For me, it provides an acute form of social mapping. Depending on what a person calls me, I immediately know how they came to know me, when they came to know me, and where they came to know me. Usually, I even have an accurate idea how long it’s been since we’ve last talked.
Perhaps this is a type of transformation or transition in culture. It seems similar to the age-old process of going from daughter to mother to grandmother, or from friend to girlfriend to wife.
Names have their place in time, and their time in place.
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