Ask Lemmy

In North America and Europe for some reason people refer to elders by their first name? We would never in 1000 years think of doing something like that, it’s considered extremely rude. We either use their surname (like Mr.X) or Uncle/Auntie.

In America at least, this is a change in the past 100 years for us, too. If you look at older American media--TV shows, books--you'll start to see depictions of children calling older people/neighbors "Mr. Lastname" or "Mrs. Lastname" and such. Like, if you watch some American black and white shows with kids in it, you'll see "appropriate child behavior" of that era modeled, and it's pretty heavily focused on kids being cute and obedient and chirping "Hello Mr. Smith!" or whatever at the mailman, and absolutely not using first names casually with adults or adults in authority. Heck, I think even older episodes of Sesame Street modeled it, and Mr. Rogers.

I realize there's no reason for non-Americans to be up to date with older American media, but there was absolutely a time within living memory when calling an older adult by their first name casually was pretty rude. I was born in the 1980s, and the shift away from being overly formal with older adults kinda happened somewhere around there because I remember both the "old" and the "new" being modeled around me.

I'm not sure all the cultural reasons behind the shift--there's probably a reason for it, I'm just not educated enough in that realm to know what it is for certain.

Or maybe I'm slightly too young. Perhaps someone from Gen X will understand what was going on there better, they would've been slightly older than me and have better memories of that period.