Surnames

[Amy Z]

Rita wrote:

> Other that than, there has been a widespread tendency in USA for 
most 
> of the twentieth century to refer to men by surname and women by 
> first name (such as when they are characters in books, or when 
> speaking of one's friends in the third person) and I believe that 
> PART of the reason for that is that men all have the same few given 
> names, but women have a wider variety of given names.

It seems to me that what is behind this is a delicacy toward women 
that is not extended to men.  There is something brusque about 
calling someone by his/her last name that makes it rather, well, 
unfeminine.

As a third option, "Mr. X" or "Ms. Y" (I guess that should be Mr. Y 
and Ms. X <g>) is more genteel than an unadorned surname.  We see it 
in HP in that professors like McGonagall and Binns will call the boys 
by last name but append a "Miss" to the girls' names.  I can't cite 
an example, but it seems to me I've seen the same with newspapers, 
which generally refer to people by last name only (the NY Times is an 
exception), but which used to do that for men but not for women.

Likewise <walking out farther still onto a very thin limb>, boys and 
men *in general* have less intimate friendships.  Women and girls 
call each other by their first names because it brings them closer; 
men and boys call each other by their last names because it keeps 
them more distant.  

Amy