The Game of the Name
Here comes John Smith walking toward me. Even though he is but a passing acquaintance, the American greeting ritual demands that I utter a few words to reassure him of my good will. But what form. of ad- dress should I use？ John？ Smith？ Dr. Smith？ A decision such as this is usually made unconsciously.
As native speakers in the American speech community, we have grown up learning the rules of address at the same time that we were acquiring the grammatical rules of American - English. At first thought, it might seem a trivial pursuit to examine the ways in which we address one another. But forms of address re- veal many assumptions we make about memebers of our speech community.
Our initial decision about the appropriate address form. is based on relative ages. If the person being ad- dressed is a child, then almost all the rules that we have unconsciously assimilated can safely be ignored, and we use the simple formula First Name. The child, in turn, addresses an adult by using the formula Tihe plus Last Name.
But defining a "child" is not always easy. I address my son's roommate at college by FN, even though he is an adult under the law. I, too, have the relative age of a child to a 75 - year - old acquaintance who calls me Pete. Let us assume that John Smith' is not a child who can be addressed by FN but is either my contemporary or my elder. The next important determiner for the form. of address will then be the speech situation.
If the situation is a formal one, then I must disregard all other rules and use social Identity plus Last Name. John Smith will always be addressed as Dr. Smith (or sometimes simply as Doctor, with Last Name understood) in the medical setting of office or hospital. (I am allowed to call him if my status is at least as high as his or if we are friends outside of our social roles, but the rest of my utterance must remain respectful.)
We are also obliged to address certain other people by their social identity in formal situation: public officials (Congressman: Your Honor), educators (Professor or Doctor), leaders of meetings (Mr. Chairman ), Roman Catholic priests (Father Daily) and nuns (Sister Anna), and so forth. By the way, note the sexist distinction in the formulas for priests and nuns. The formula for a priest is Father plus Last Name, but for a nun it is Sister plus Religious Name (usually an FN).
Most conversations, however, are not carried on in formal speech situations, and so the basic decision is when to use FN to TLN. A social acquaintance or newly hired colleague of approximately the same age and rank is usually introduced on an FN basis. "Pete, I'd like you to meet Harvy. "Now a problem arises if both age and rank of cone of the parties are higher: "Pete, I'd like you to meet Attorney Brown."
Attorney Brown may, of course, at any time signal me that he is willing to suspend the rules of address and allow an FN basis. Such a suspension is his privilege to bestow, and it is usually handled humorously, with a remark like, “I answer quicker to Bruce.”
Complications arise when relative age and relative rank are not both the same. A young doctor who joins a hospital finds it difficult to address a much older doctor. They are equal in rank (and therefore FN should be used) but the great disparity in ages calls for TLN. In such cases, the young doctor can use the No - Name (NN) formula, phrasing his utterances adroitly to avoid using any term of address at all.
English is quite exceptional among the world's languages in this respect. Most European languages oblige the speaker to choose between the familiar and formal second person singular (as in the French tu and vous), as English once did when “thou” was in use.
This is the basic American system, but the rules vary according to speech situations, subtle friendship or kin relationships between the speakers, regions of

A. relative ages
B. speech situation
C. relative ranks
D. relative incomes