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