Other countries provide clear rules. In most places around the world you have a familiar way of speaking to someone, a different formal way, and in some languages a way reserved for the highest ranks. You grow up knowing which is which.
Approaching the language from afar, you learn that it’s safer to use the formal way in addressing someone newly met. If not, the new acquaintance may feel you’ve invaded his space too soon. When he’s ready, let him break the ice and change from “vous” (formal) to “tu”) familiar.
If now you’re on familiar terms and the person unexpectedly changes to the formal, a red flag may be getting waved—the road has turned bumpy and you are being kept at arm’s length.
Spanish has an oddity. It provides a third person, usually used for “he” or “she,” for when you are speaking not about someone but directly to him, a person for whom you wish to show respect. It’s a leftover from when royalty got addressed in the third person: “Would your highness prefer his eggs scrambled or fried?”
In old-fashioned Spanish-speaking families, that third person (”Usted”) is conserved even from child to parent. Truly old-fashioned.
So what are we American English speakers left with? “Hi,” ‘Hello,” “How are things?” all nondescript. If you have or were brought up in the South, as I was, you have “Sir” or “Ma’am,” forms you don’t quickly forget. Lately, a whole pail full of forms get thrown out, starting with “guy” or “guys,” used whether you’re speaking to someone male or female. I see the language not suffering if it backtracked and threw those forms out.
That brings up areas where the rules are hazy. Aside from some nieces and nephews and their offspring for whom I am legitimately an uncle, there are a swarm of their friends who grew up knowing me as “Uncle Stanley.” I see some of them occasionally still today, long after they were kids, and I’m still called “Uncle Stanley.” At one niece’s wedding, I introduced myself thus: “My first name is Uncle and my last name is Stanley.”
Nowadays my two nieces call me “Uncle Stanley,” and so do their offspring except for one great nephew who pays no attention and calls me “Stanley.” I never issued an invitation for him to do that, he simply appointed himself master of the subject. I’ve thought of suggesting that all of them drop the “Uncle,” but I figure it’s somehow more comfortable for them to hold on to it.
The same question arose between me and those of my parents’ generation. Eventually I got to calling Uncle Morris just “Morris,” even though he lived until 103. Others kept to the “uncle” before his given name. I dropped the “uncle” and “aunt” before all my mother’s siblings and their spouses but not to my father’s youngest brother and his wife. I could never omit “uncle” or “aunt” from Uncle Ben and Aunt Sarah, imposing and wealthy relatives on whom just first names would have seemed offensive. As long as they lived, they were “uncle” and “aunt.”
Thinking this over, I like the implication that goes with “uncle.” It suggests friendliness and affection without full-time responsibility. An uncle is who you have fun with, go out to dinner with, for a day. At night you and he go to your respective addresses.
I’ve been hoping for the time when there will be an “Uncle’s Day.” Maybe in the fall, when it doesn’t compete with the day for mother and fathers. No big ceremony, just recognition of the role that is just ours to play—long overdue.
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Stanley Ely writes about lots of family members in his new collection of essays, “Thinking It Through: Reflections Past Eighty.”