[INDOLOGY] prof. or mr. or mrs. or ms. etc first name

[Arlo Griffiths]

Dear Prof. Paturi,

As so often in life, everything depends on context. I don't think one can generalize about English as a whole, because attitudes on forms of address are different for instance between the USA and the UK, and within those countries will depend on many factors such as class and education. Use of titles can be a form of politeness but it can also be a strategy of distancing, for instance when the speaker disapproves of the person he's speaking about. I believe that for most native English speakers it sounds strange to see an academic title combined with a first name rather than the surname, and strangeness may be experienced as unpleasantness by some. I personally don't like it when people address me with both given name and surname, but this happens frequently, and I suppose it doesn't help that most people can't tell from my given name Arlo whether I am a "Mr." or a "Mrs.". Then again, people from other parts of the world than my own may not even be able to determine which is my given name and which is my surname. People may come from parts of the world where no distinction between surnames and given names parallel to the one made in many (all?) English-speaking parts of the world is made. Many (geographic and social) parts of India do not know such a distinction. Hence I was, frankly, a bit surprised to see colleagues take offense in this forum at such a common feature of intercultural communication as the one that has caught your interest.

Some more attention to and respect for diversity in naming practices among Indologists would in my opinion be salutary. How often have I had to correct bibliographies where authors such as "Raghu Vira" and "Lokesh Chandra" with unitary but bipartite names were dissected to become "Vira, Raghu" and "Chandra, Lokesh" and placed under V and C? How often have I seen Dutch names with "van (der/den)" arranged under V in bibliographies? 

Best wishes,

Arlo Griffiths

Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2015 09:56:16 +0530
From: nagarajpaturi at gmail.com
To: wujastyk at gmail.com
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] prof. or mr. or mrs. or ms. etc first name
CC: indology at list.indology.info

Its alright. These oversights happen with everyone of us. Now ,coming to the point of discussion in the thread, when I went through Prof. Pandurangi's mail, for an analysis in terms of this title in front of first name or second name or no title at all, I was not able to see any system or hierarchy in this matter in the mail.  Just curious to learn from the list members who speak English as their mother tongue: is it considered insulting inside the English speaking culture, if the title such as Mr or Prof is kept in front of the first name? This was seriously an interesting piece of cultural information from me. Learning such cultural nuances of English language appears to be a never ending process for English learners like me.   
On Tue, Jun 16, 2015 at 5:42 PM, Dominik Wujastyk <wujastyk at gmail.com> wrote:
I'm terribly sorry!  You're absolutely right!  I was looking at the wrong email header.  Please accept my apologies.  
​​Dominik Wujastyk​


-- 
Prof.Nagaraj PaturiHyderabad-500044


_______________________________________________
INDOLOGY mailing list
INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
indology-owner at list.indology.info (messages to the list's managing committee)
http://listinfo.indology.info (where you can change your list options or unsubscribe) 		 	   		  


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology/attachments/20150617/b7188b5a/attachment.htm>