calling girls by surnames - Minerva' age - JKR chats

[Blaise]

No: HPFGUIDX 18890

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., Catlady <catlady at w...> wrote:
 
> Morag wrote:
> > it is not usual to refer to girls in the same way.(snip) I think
> > Snape is being marginally ruder, though it is a kind of standoff,
> > in that neither is prepared to adjust their own usage to the 
other's.
> 

Catlady wrote:
> Very long ago when I was young, girls calling each other by surname 
only
> was kind of a girl jock thing ("Everybody shut up or get out of the
> room! Cook, this means you!").

It is not unheard of in England, when girls arrived in areas that had 
been boys-only before, for the girls to be called by their surnames 
as the boys were.  E.g. in Dorothy Sayers' 'Gaudy Night' the female 
undergraduates are called by their surnames alone.  

> Blaise wrote:
> > Has JKR said anywhere, e.g. in a chat/interview, how
> > old Minerva McGonagall is?
> 
> Blaise! It is so nice to see you back! I had a Classics remark 
(about
> Eris and the Kallisti apple) to put in the latest chapter of my
> snapefic, so I assigned it to Blaise Zabini because he has the same 
name
> as you and you're a classicist.
> 
> JKR said in a chat that Dumbledore is 150 and McGonagall 'is a 
sprightly
> seventy'. If she meant 70 at the time of the chat, Minnie could have
> been born 1930 and her schooldays could have overlapped with Tom 
Riddle
> (born 1926)'s.

Thank you very much for both the compliment and the info.  I have 
entirely lost track of JKR's chats; could you tell me where I can 
find a copy of the one you cite?  

Incidentally, if anyone has a nice up-to-date list of all the 
chats/interviews which JKR has taken part in and are to be found 
online, I'd love to see it.  

Thanks

Blaise.