USE OF CHRISTIAN NAMES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 719, 24 April 1953, Page 5

USE OF CHRISTIAN NAMES

SirIt is gratifying to see that The Listener has taken up the important subject of personal nomenclature in New Zealand. The local conventions, it seems to me, are extremely simple and clearcut, Amongst acquaintances and friends the surname, with the appropriate prefix, is used only at the first meeting and only then before the second beer or second cup of tea, Thereafter the Christian name or nickname is adopted.-(In conservative circles, I am_ informed Christian names are withheld until the third beer or third cup of tea is reached, but this-is:mérely ,hearsay.) -In all other circumstances the surname ‘is preceded by "Mr.," "Mrs.," ‘"Miss,": etc. The naked qurliame: is never tised unless as an extreme expression of hatred or contempt, though it is employed in a slightly different way in gaols, courts of law, boys’ secondary schools, and similar institutions where archaic English customs still linger on. These conventions are universally known and observed except, it seems, amongst New Zealand intellectuals, The dace authority on New Zealand colquial speech persisted in calling me by my surname until, with gfeat embarrassment on both sides, I was compelled to ask him to desist. I have noticed the same foreign practice cropping up in certain radio "panels" where, possibly in emulation of the BBC, the speakers address one anothet. by unadorned surnames except, oddly enough, when their remarks are directed at a woman. This adds, I believe, to the derivative and artificial effect such sessions so often produce, The spéakers should either use Christian names, as they obviously do once they have ceased broadcasting, or, if they wish to be formal, employ surnames without omitting the handles demanded by the national code of manners.

E. H.

McCORMICK

(Auckland).

Sir-I was very interested to read your recent editorial on the use of Christian names amongst men, and-as an Englishman who has lived and worked in New Zealand for 26 yearsI have been trying to analyse my own feelings on the matter. Any views which I hold on English usage must, of course, be coloured by the lapse of these intervening years, and I should, I hope, be the first to admit that it is the intention, and not the form, which counts in matters of courtesy. Nevertheless, I think that there is something in Mr. Toynbee’s contention that -"The degrees of intimacy are worth preserving,’ and I belieye that this is better effected by the English usage than by our own. The Englishman’s "degrees of intimacy" are successively represented first by "Mr. Smith," then by "Smith," and finally-rarely and after a long, long while-by "Tommy," Use of the forthright surname, far from being resented as churlishness, is valued as an expression of friendship, Retention of the prefix "Mister" over a number of years implies either that the addressee is disliked, or that the association has progressed no further than the barest acquaintanceship. To pass to Christian names does not, I think, appear to the average Englishman so much an "unwelcome short cut to intimacy" as a misapplication of a form of nomenclature properly confined to the family and to very small children. This reluctance of my compatriots to use Christian names is admittedly curious, and can, I think, only be explained in colloquial terms. The Englishman is profoundly afraid of being considered

"sissy" or of "letting down his hair’a fear which probably stems from his schooldays and a juvenile contempt for the practices of the Young Ladies’ Seminary across the road. However that may be, the fact remains that Tommy Smith, among his friends, drops his Christian name on leaving the kindergarten, and does not normally reassume it thereafter, except in the family circle and among his feminine entourage. All this is, af course, a matter of comparatiye usage, and one would be hard put to Sustain objection to the use of the Christian. name as. evidence of friendship if, in New Zealand, that were the real position. I do not, however, believe that this is generally so. One’s eagerness to call one’s boss "Charlie"or, irrespective of any community of interest, to greet a casual tramway acquaintance as "Steve’-smacks rather of a robust demonstration of applied democracy than of true friendship. Autre pays, autre moeurs; it would be indefensible for an Englishman to attempt to dictate manners and modes to the country which affords him hospitality; and, as I have said before, it is the intention and not the form which counts. Nevertheless, there yas to me a. ring about the plain surname which conveys just that sturdy confidence felt by the Englishman for his real friends, and which he is too inarticulate ‘to express by a more sentimental approach.

J. B.

HYATT

Snr. (Wellington).