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

[Nagaraj Paturi]

After all these responses my learning is this. It is not proper to place
titles such as Mr or Prof in front of first names of  English speaking
persons.

In fact I did not do that. The thumb rule I knew was put these titles in
front of second names when you want to be respectful. Use the first name if
you want to be informal. But I never thought about  what could be the
cultural connotation if title is put in front of first name. Now it seems
that it evokes feelings of strangeness, insult, offense etc.

It was strange to me when elderly scholars asked me to call them by
their first name. I was not able to do that at all. I was strongly
inhibited from my deep inside from doing that.  I saw very young boys
address Prof. Wendy Doniger as Wendy or Prof. Mckim Marriott as Kim. To my
sensibility that sounded as weird, not a good practice. I was able to
address Prof. Yigal Bronner as Yigal. Probably because he was young. I
wanted to know if my addressing persons as Prof. Doniger or Prof. Marriott
was offensive. I was told that it was not.

Now, this is a new point I learnt.


-- 
Prof.Nagaraj Paturi
Hyderabad-500044


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology/attachments/20150618/1136b288/attachment.htm>