Honorifics in English

[Walde]

I was filling out an online dental form and saw that "Mx." and "No Title" were options when selecting a title for yourself. I knew this already existed but I have never come across it before in person and was surprised (in a good way). I've always be presented with common titles such as "Mr." or "Ms." and some profession titles like "Doctor." 

In regards to gender, what honorifics, if any, do you use? How do you feel about them and are they important to you? How do you react when addressed with the typical "Mr." and "Ms." or when other titles are an option?

I personally don't want to be given any honorifics. If it's a required field in a form, I'd go with "Miss."

[Anomaly Q3Xr]

I generally use "Mx" in any form that gives me the option. I would prefer they just use my name.

 

My doctors, and most of my utilities now have me as "Mx". A few still don't have anything beyond the more common ones.

[Fraggle Underdark]

Darth

[Vero Totem]

As a form of respect, most people refer to women in my workplace as "Mrs." but I correct them and tell them I'm "Miss" or "Ms." since I am not married.  I would love to see the day where "Mx." is as commonly used as the other honorifics.

[Olallieberry]

1 hour ago, Vero Totem said:

As a form of respect, most people refer to women in my workplace as "Mrs." but I correct them and tell them I'm "Miss" or "Ms." since I am not married.  I would love to see the day where "Mx." is as commonly used as the other honorifics.

Have you ever heard "Mx." pronounced out loud?

[Vero Totem]

10 minutes ago, Olallieberry said:

Have you ever heard "Mx." pronounced out loud?

 

You can find just about anything on YouTube these days.

[Tystie]

Dr. I’m lucky because I have that option, although it’s not always offered on forms. I use the title not to flaunt academic achievement but because of its gender neutrality.

 

I don’t like the baggage which comes with Miss or Mrs, and I don’t much like Ms although that’s sometimes what I get stuck with.

 

I’d consider using Mx or no title if those options were presented to me.

[Synchronicity]

I'm referred to as 'Mx' by a few organisations, and I hate it.  They also give me a middle initial, when I don't have a middle name.  I've written to the doctors' surgery asking them to change it but they did nothing.   I didn't choose 'Mx', so they shouldn't have used it.

 

I'm 'Mr' to most companies, including my bank, so that's all right.

[Sister Mercurial]

I generally use Miss.  If not available, then Ms.  However, what really annoys me is the translation mistake whereby various organisations with headquarters on the Continent use Mrs as the standard title for all women.  No, I am not married.  Mrs [surname] is my mother, with whom I have no contact.  

[Fraggle Underdark]

24 minutes ago, Synchronicity said:

I'm referred to as 'Mx' by a few organisations, and I hate it.  They also give me a middle initial, when I don't have a middle name.  I've written to the doctors' surgery asking them to change it but they did nothing.   I didn't choose 'Mx', so they shouldn't have used it.

 

I'm 'Mr' to most companies, including my bank, so that's all right.

They just made up a middle initial for you??

[Synchronicity]

3 minutes ago, - 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖑𝖊𝕽𝖔𝖈𝕶 - said:

They just made up a middle initial for you??

It's from the middle name of my dead name, but I abandoned all of it but the surname when I changed it legally.

[Fraggle Underdark]

Just now, Synchronicity said:

It's from the middle name of my dead name, but I abandoned all of it but the surname when I changed it legally.

Ahh

[daveb]

I don't really need any honorifics myself. I'd be happy to choose "none", or leave it blank, but some sites make it a required field and I often don't like any of the choices (especially when it's limited to ms, miss, mrs, or mr). I don't recall encountering any that offered mx as a choice. I am pretty sure I have seen at least one that included the usual 4, plus things such as dr and rev (or similar) and maybe a few others). If it was absolutely necessary to have an honorific for some strange reason, I guess I'd prefer mx over the usual 4 choices. Better yet maybe, give us more choices - like a person with a PhD can choose dr, maybe there could be something for people with a master's degree (might be tricky though as ms and mr are already taken)?  

 

(or give us some fun choices - like one of my old co-workers, when we passed each other in the halls he would address me as counsellor (or councilor?), so I addressed him back the same way; just a nod and a "counsellor", "counsellor") 

[Hurta]

I don't think I've ever encountered a site that asked me for hoorifics (at least, not in English), but if the option was there, I'd probably go with Dr,

[Fangorn]

There aren't any that I really like, so I prefer none. I'd be okay with miss in some circumstances, but only if I had explicitly stated that I was okay with it. I'm nonbinary, but I think that Mx. would be the worst out of all of them for me.

[uhtred]

You know, I've never seen "Mx" before and didn't know it existed.  Now I do, thanks

[Monke Jimmy]

You could be like me and use your first name like a mononym lol. 

But also I want to say how oddly rare it is to actually refer to people where I am. I will have entire conversations with teachers and students without ever learning their names (or pronouns). It's super weird. I feel like everyone is bad at names and nobody wants to remember who is Dr. or Prof. or Mr./Mrs./Ms./Mx. 

[EmeraldIce]

I go with either Ms. or no title, but hopefully will be Dr. within a year. I feel like Ms. is usually the default for women because it's the best accepted option. Miss feels infantilizing and Mrs. assumes you're using your husband's name, and both suggest marital status to a certain extent, which feels inappropriate, especially when the question pops up on a job application form. For the same reason, I generally put my sexuality as "prefer not to disclose."

 

With my students, I tell them they can either call me Madame or by my first name. Madame is supposedly the French equivalent of Mrs, but in practice it's used for both married and unmarried women. There's been a push away from using Mademoiselle at all for the purpose of not defining women by marital status. These days Mademoiselle is most often used to address minors. When I was unmarried, I would still introduce myself as Mademoiselle [family name] when teaching the words on the first day of first-semester French in a full immersion setting, but I would always make it clear afterwards, when presenting the syllabus in English, that Madame is actually the more professional form of address, even though I was unmarried.

 

8 hours ago, Vero Totem said:

As a form of respect, most people refer to women in my workplace as "Mrs." but I correct them and tell them I'm "Miss" or "Ms." since I am not married.  I would love to see the day where "Mx." is as commonly used as the other honorifics.

Interesting. I haven't seen people call someone else Mrs. in a looonng time. It's been so ingrained in me that it's not always appropriate, and you don't always know if the woman is married, and if she is married, you don't necessarily know if she has changed her name. In my circles, I'd say those who changed names is a minority.

[Sister Mercurial]

8 hours ago, daveb said:

(or give us some fun choices - like one of my old co-workers, when we passed each other in the halls he would address me as counsellor (or councilor?), so I addressed him back the same way; just a nod and a "counsellor", "counsellor") 

Cllr (short for Councillor) is a legit genderless title that can be used for someone elected to a local government council.  However, it doesn't apply to a counsellor (one who advises, usually a mental health professional).  

[Walde]

9 hours ago, daveb said:

maybe there could be something for people with a master's degree (might be tricky though as ms and mr are already taken)?  

apparently this exists within Austrian German as "Magister." Although, you would have to attach "herr" or "frau" to it as a gender indicator. having an English equivalent would be nice to see!

[daveb]

6 hours ago, Walde said:

apparently this exists within Austrian German as "Magister." Although, you would have to attach "herr" or "frau" to it as a gender indicator. having an English equivalent would be nice to see!

We do have the word, "magister", in English, too, but I don't encounter it much. The abbreviated honorific could be mg.  

(supposedly there is a feminine version, "magistra", but I have never seen that in use - and there's no reason it would be needed. Like some people choose not to use the word, "actress", when referring to themself. Anyone of any gender can be an actor. No need for gendered forms of the word. No one ever says "doctress".  )

[ThePapercraftingCat]

I feel like I'm too old for Miss and too young for Ms, but I usually put Miss down, if a title is needed. I'd prefer not to use a title, unless it's something like Lady, which I have seen as an option on forms. But I think the chances of me becoming Lady PapercraftingCat are pretty small. 

[uhtred]

17 hours ago, EmeraldIce said:

I go with either Ms. or no title, but hopefully will be Dr. within a year. I feel like Ms. is usually the default for women because it's the best accepted option. Miss feels infantilizing and Mrs. assumes you're using your husband's name, and both suggest marital status to a certain extent, which feels inappropriate, especially when the question pops up on a job application form. For the same reason, I generally put my sexuality as "prefer not to disclose."

 

With my students, I tell them they can either call me Madame or by my first name. Madame is supposedly the French equivalent of Mrs, but in practice it's used for both married and unmarried women. There's been a push away from using Mademoiselle at all for the purpose of not defining women by marital status. These days Mademoiselle is most often used to address minors. When I was unmarried, I would still introduce myself as Mademoiselle [family name] when teaching the words on the first day of first-semester French in a full immersion setting, but I would always make it clear afterwards, when presenting the syllabus in English, that Madame is actually the more professional form of address, even though I was unmarried.

 

Interesting. I haven't seen people call someone else Mrs. in a looonng time. It's been so ingrained in me that it's not always appropriate, and you don't always know if the woman is married, and if she is married, you don't necessarily know if she has changed her name. In my circles, I'd say those who changed names is a minority.

Dr is nice because its not gendered. OTOH, unless you are a MD,  very few people with Doctorates actually us Dr. - usually because it shows that they can't use Prof. and so are pretty lot on the totem pole. 

[EmeraldIce]

19 hours ago, uhtred said:

Dr is nice because its not gendered. OTOH, unless you are a MD,  very few people with Doctorates actually us Dr. - usually because it shows that they can't use Prof. and so are pretty lot on the totem pole. 

In my former department, most of the professors go by Dr. They will refer to their colleagues as Dr. [last name] in front of students and most students will call them Dr. [last name] as well. The only exceptions are undergrads whose only interaction with the professor was in a classroom setting and who may not have caught onto departmental culture (these people will call them Professor), and students from within the professor's own lab who many will invite to call by first name. I'm under the impression that a lot of science departments function this way. It feels weird to call those professors by Professor because to me that makes it feel like our primary and only relationship is as teacher and student, which is often not the case. They are our advisors, research mentors, teaching supervisors, PIs, academic colleagues, etc.

 

And what if they're not professors? That doesn't make their position less respected. Deans, provosts, and chancellors all have doctorates and go by Dr. Many researchers and leaders at well-respected research institutes have doctorates. And I'd say it's especially important in research institutes for them to go by Dr. because that's the only real way they can state their qualification. Researchers who publish and present for well-known journals and at well-known conferences will go by Dr. because yes, they're not professors, but they also have the qualifications of a seasoned and established researcher. Even if they do have a professorship title, researchers may go by Dr. if their position doesn't really require much teaching if any at all—this was the case for my mother.

[uhtred]

1 hour ago, EmeraldIce said:

In my former department, most of the professors go by Dr. They will refer to their colleagues as Dr. [last name] in front of students and most students will call them Dr. [last name] as well. The only exceptions are undergrads whose only interaction with the professor was in a classroom setting and who may not have caught onto departmental culture (these people will call them Professor), and students from within the professor's own lab who many will invite to call by first name. I'm under the impression that a lot of science departments function this way. It feels weird to call those professors by Professor because to me that makes it feel like our primary and only relationship is as teacher and student, which is often not the case. They are our advisors, research mentors, teaching supervisors, PIs, academic colleagues, etc.

 

And what if they're not professors? That doesn't make their position less respected. Deans, provosts, and chancellors all have doctorates and go by Dr. Many researchers and leaders at well-respected research institutes have doctorates. And I'd say it's especially important in research institutes for them to go by Dr. because that's the only real way they can state their qualification. Researchers who publish and present for well-known journals and at well-known conferences will go by Dr. because yes, they're not professors, but they also have the qualifications of a seasoned and established researcher. Even if they do have a professorship title, researchers may go by Dr. if their position doesn't really require much teaching if any at all—this was the case for my mother.

It must depend on the field, or even in the culture in a particular university in that field. 

 

In the lab where I worked, a PhD was pretty much assumed and never mentioned. In the university I was in there was a clear distinction between "prof and "dr".  - but it was a really stuffy place - and not nearly as good as it thought it was.  In industry its different: I do  hear people being called "Dr." a lot. 

[daveb]

In the department where I did my MS degree grad students and faculty were on a first name basis. I never heard anyone use any honorifics there. Maybe casual US-based or something about the university or the specific department.

[Itsa me a person]

Between, Miss, Mr, and Mx. I prefer to just use no honorifics at all 

When it comes to ma'am or sir, I don't really have much of a preference; either one is fine 

[EmeraldIce]

On 12/3/2023 at 3:20 PM, daveb said:

In the department where I did my MS degree grad students and faculty were on a first name basis. I never heard anyone use any honorifics there. Maybe casual US-based or something about the university or the specific department.

That's the case with my current department (I'm now in the humanities) and with most humanities departments I've seen, but when I was in the sciences, Dr. was pretty standard. In my old department, people were on a first name basis with their advisor and no other faculty member. Even with our own advisors, it's a toss-up. Sometimes they'll tell us we could call them by first name but it just doesn't stick because we don't hear anyone else call them that, or because their cultural backgrounds preclude them from being comfortable doing so. In my case, my advisor's lab consisted entirely of internationals, mostly Chinese and Thai. To put into perspective, I was the only student he had who could be considered American, and I was born in China and ethnically Chinese.