Emphasis on the title: Professor (Was: Who calls Voldemort "Lord")

[Ceridwen]

No: HPFGUIDX 150998

Zoe C:
> Hi all - De-Lurking to answer this question - 
> 
> Did you not refer to your teachers by their last names?  We all 
did -
> we would also have nicknames for some of them for example Roger 
> Ramjet for Mr Ramshaw or Boring Brocky instead of Mr Brock and yes 
> we would quite often refer to them by their sirnames or their 
> nicknames - I can remember being reminded (by other teachers) on a 
> number of occasions that it was MR Arnett rather than Arnett, or 
MRS 
> Wakeley, not old Wakeley etc - and she was my tutor who I really 
> liked!

Ceridwen:
Hi, Zoe, thanks for de-lurking!

We did the same thing.  A couple of teachers wanted to be addressed 
familiarily (this was the early 70s), so we had Uncle Guy for 
English.  I don't recall our teachers correcting us, but there were 
certain teachers/positions for which we didn't drop the titles: Mrs 
Xxx, girls' vice principle, for instance, and one teacher who kept an 
iron hand on his classes when other classes were beginning to 
experience disruptions which have since, apparently, gotten worse: 
Mr. Kxx insisted that we stay in our seats even after the bell had 
rung, so we sat until he dismissed us.  And he was definitely *Mr.* 
Kxx, never 'Kxx' alone.

Zoe C:
> It's nothing to do with manners or whether you respect a teacher or 
> not - it's just part of that teenage rebellion thing - and don't 
> forget, in Hogwarts as well as my (and many other schools) puplis 
> are often addressed to their faces by just their sirnames,
> (especially Harry by Snape - who always refers to him as Potter).
> I had an awful last name - Wrigley - and I hated being called by 
it, 
> so it's just kind of a kickback.

Ceridwen:
Could it also be that Harry comes from the Muggle world, which in the 
early 1990s was experiencing greater and greater disruptions by 
students in the classrooms as schools changed their tactics in 
dealing with disruptive students?  The WW does seem to be a bit 
behind in some things, maybe because wizards appear to live longer 
than Muggles, and there are more traditions being shown and passed 
down through multiple generations.

Also, teachers would have earned their titles by making it through 
school in the first place, which the students haven't done yet, then 
gone on to further studies under that idea.

I think McGonagall also refers to Harry as 'Potter'.  I'm not one 
hundred percent certain, I hear Maggie Smith's voice (and she's got a 
great voice for McGonagall!) saying it, so it could be movie 
contamination.  But, we called each other by our surnames in school, 
too.  I think we all got a little tired of hearing our last names!

Ceridwen.