Let’s say there’s someone I want to call Mr/Ms/Mrs [Name], but I don’t know their gender, is there a title I can use that doesn’t assume their gender?
“Hey cunt” works for anybody. But your mileage may vary depending on your location.
Should that not be properly, “Oi, cunt!” ?
Depends on what you’re going for, I guess. I’m just an American who doesn’t like most people.
Works best in Australia
Scotland concurs
M’theydy
🎩
🧔
Slightly off topic but I really like the approach where the honorific is just dropped entirely. So just [Name]. No Mr/Ms/Mrs. It mostly doesn’t serve any purpose anyway.
That’s what we did in Sweden in the 60s. It feels so archaic whenever I have to enter an honorific on documents (i.e when booking hotels and flights) from other countries.
Sometimes they allow for you to write in other stuff. I put in “His majesty” once, it printed out as “His Firstname Lastname” in my hotel reservation paper. Disappointed.
I also put in “Emperor” for some mailing list stuff. I get a chuckle when I get mails from them. “Emperor RaivoKulli, sign up now for the conference”
I spent the last 20 years in the US military, most of it being referred to as “Sergeant [cobysev].” The past year since I’ve been retired, I’ve been trying to get used to being called “Mr. [cobysev].” It’s really weird, especially since I joined the military at 18, so no one called me Mr. previously.
Honestly you could probably get away with just “Sarge” as a nickname. Won’t help much on official documents but it might make conversation a little more comfortable.
I almost never see it used anymore here in the US, either. Let’s just cancel that useless title.
On the one hand it feels really weird when someone (not a child) calls me with that phrasing - that’s my Dad plus no one does that anymore
But on the other hand it seems disrespectful for a child to call an adult by first name, and I don’t know a better alternative
Try the South
Why don’t we just replace honorifics with pronouns?
She/Her Smith, please find enclosed your Kmart rewards card
That solves the problem of where to put pronouns in formal settings
This is honestly the right answer. You can be formal without the honorific. Include any titles they may have (PHD, PE).
I have started just using M. Like, “Dear M. Lastname”. I saw it being done in French and just adopted it for English too. No one’s complained yet. (Have also seen Mx. but figure that could be confusing.)
Just fyi, M. in French is only equivalent to Mr, it’s short for Monsieur. Mme (short for Madame) is equivalent to Mrs, and Mlle (short for Mademoiselle) is equivalent to Miss/Ms.
So using M. for everyone is equivalent to saying Mr. for everyone.
Yeah, I know! That’s why I was surprised when someone addressed me as “M.” (while I don’t present as such, traditionally) in French. So, I thought “that’s neat!” and picked it up.
Ehh, it can be adapted to mean Mister/Misses if that’s how people interpret it.
“Dear M. M. Night Shamalyan”
Dear M. Eminem
M’minem! /tips fedora
In the sci-fi book Hyperion (which takes place hundreds of years in the future) they use this convention throughout and it works really well, so I’ve also wished that it were widely adopted in our society. (Except for androids, where the title is A. rather than M.)
I’ve been playing though Prey and seeing people refer to Morgan Yu as “M. Yu” always throws me for a loop because I think they’re using an honorific. Doesn’t help that Morgan is already designed to be a gender-ambivalent character so the player can choose their gender and the story will still be the same
A sci-fi book from 1991 used that (Hyperion), and I thought it was just futurespeak. TIL!
TIL M. Bison was nonbinary.
I vote that we change it to Mmm.
That will make all honorific communications sultry and interesting.
Mmm Adulated, We appreciate your interest in our organization, but we regret to inform you that we will not be able to hire you for the role. Please continue to…
Mmm Adulated 🤤
Would you not be Mmm Aspersion?
Too bad we can’t adopt the Japanese “-san” honorific, as it is gender neutral!
I think we can!
I don’t think you can do that without being called a weeb (at least on the western part of the internet).
I bet they use the terms emoji, karaoke, tsunami, karate or origami.
Sup, fool?
Wagwan fam?
Seconding the honorific “Mx”. From what I’ve seen, it’s decently well-adopted in the non-binary community. I’ve not seen it much used outside of that community–it seems to be used mostly when someone ‘needs’ an honorific but doesn’t fit into the 1950s list. I’ve heard it pronounced “Mix” and “Mux”. I tend to go with “Mix”.
IRL, I’ve used “Hey, you” and “Yo!” when hollering at folks I don’t know (example, “Yo! You dropped something!”)
Sidenote: As a nonbinary person, I prefer not being given an honorific over being given the wrong one.
Minirant not directed at OP: And omg, if you need to go with a feminine honorific and you don’t know whether the person is married, go with Ms, not Mrs. or Miss. The connotations of the wrong one are just creepy.
Not married and called Mrs=“Hey, you’re too old to be unmarried. Please feel judged about your relationship status”
Married and called Miss=“Hey, you’re too young to be married. Please feel like I don’t respect you as an adult.”
In all cases Ms=“I don’t know and/or care about your marital status and I’m trying to be polite”Do you have any suggestions on sir/ma’am? I’m from the south, and genuinely don’t know how to stop saying sir/ma’am. I always try to go with whatever the person is presenting, and I have tried not to say it at all. But that southernism is deeply ingrained. Like at a drive through or something, where you only have a voice to go off of it’s especially bad. I do try to avoid it, but I wish there were a gender neutral version, because language just feels rude without it to someone who grew up with that instilled in them. All adult people must be addressed as ma’am or sir, regardless of age in any kind of setting that isn’t close friends. If I forego it, I feel rude as fuck, and most of the time whoever you’re talking to also acts offended. But the last thing I want to do is misgender someone, especially with words like sir/ma’am, that are such… Strict terms. Halp?
I’m wicked sorry, I don’t have a good answer. You could try Mx and see how it feels. I’ve dropped sir/ma’am for folks that I know, or that appear my age or younger. I still use it for older folks I don’t know out in the wild.
I, personally, never take offense at being misgendered in a Southern accent if I’m called “ma’am”. I grew up in the South and to me it just feels like someone’s trying their best to be polite and I take it as intended. Sometimes I also just misparse it as “man”, which feels a bit informal, but whatevs. Miss still feels creepy, but I get that less now that I’ve hit 30.
If you’re working at a drive through where there’s a customer/service worker dynamic, I’d 1. go with ma’am or sir 2. accept it if someone corrects you, and 3. recognize you’re more likely to be yelled at by someone for using a ‘new-fangled honorific’ than for misgendering someone.
Edit: Oh! I have replaced “Thank you sir/ma’am” with “Thank you, kindly” and that seems to work for me.
I like thank you kindly! Haha
And no, I don’t work at a drive through, I just use them occasionally. Lol. And yeah, miss has always felt weird to me. I know in other parts of the country ma’am has an age connotation, so maybe miss is more appropriate there? But to me, it always felt sort of… Disparaging. Like you’re specifically saying “you there, child-like-female-being!” Lol. Just doesn’t sit right.
And I’d so much rather be yelled at for using new fangled honorifics. Haha. If I accidentally misgender someone, I know I’ve potentially ruined a day, or at the very least added to a certain level of frustration. If I get yelled at for some new fangled honorific then what I’ve done is outted a jerk, and pissed them off, and pissing off jerks makes me happy. Haha.
‘Boss’ is a pretty good one for someone you’re trying to show respect to. ‘Buddy’ is good if you’re on an even field.
Just use dude. I use that for ladies and gentlemen.
Except in the office. I call all my male workers ladies.
In the Philippines, we use mamsir (combination of ma’am and sir)
I’m a fellow southerner with the same training. I use “yes, please” or “no, thank you” for the “yes sirs/ma’ams” and even the older generations don’t notice.
I like “Hello GentlePerson!” It’s oddly formal, so no one can say you aren’t being polite, and it’s gender neutral.
I think we should standardize to the “mux” pronunciation.
In electrical and computer engineering, a mux is a [multiplexer](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplexer#:~:text=In electronics%2C a multiplexer (or,inputs known as select lines.). It’s a chip that takes several potential inputs and switches between them to make a single output. This is analogous to deciding between multiple possible honorifics, in my mind.
It is a stealth pun, which is one of my favorite types of puns.
Let’s also use “demux” for formal plural then.
those are good points, thank you!
And omg, if you need to go with a feminine honorific and you don’t know whether the person is married, go with Ms, not Mrs. or Miss.
I understand what you mean here, except on the difference between Ms and Miss, do you mean this more in terms of writing than speaking? I ask only because I don’t know that I’ve ever been able to hear a particular difference between Ms and Miss when spoken, but that may be more related to my hearing or something that I’ve not realized.
Edit:
Reading a little further, I see that it comes across as sorta creepy? I’d always parsed it as a more informal address compared to the more formal ma’am for femme folks, so this is interesting, to say the least! I suppose it reads sorta like someone calling an adult man, “young man” or “boy” despite their age, since I don’t think there’s something similar to miss for masculine folks.That would come across creepy, unless from older folks and heavily dependent on context.
I understand what you mean here, except on the difference between Ms and Miss, do you mean this more in terms of writing than speaking? I ask only because I don’t know that I’ve ever been able to hear a particular difference between Ms and Miss when spoken, but that may be more related to my hearing or something that I’ve not realized.
“Ms.” Is pronounced “mizzz” kinda like you’re a bee, “Miss” is pronounced “missss” like a snake.
I’ve honestly heard Ms. pronounced both ways (and both have been accepted in my experience), so that probably explains the confusion 😅 Thanks though!
I grew up with Mrs and Ms pronounced nearly the same, so I get the pronunciation confusion.
Also, calling a woman either Mrs or Miss defines her by her marital status. Since we are more than that, Ms is more appropriate (assuming that an honorific must be used at all).
Mx. seems the most commonly used for gender neutral. It’s used both by non-binary people and in cases where you purposefully don’t want to put a gender as a prefix.
Is it just pronounced “mix?”
Usually, yes. Or Mixter sometimes.
Comrade, or Captain
This is exactly my approach, except I usually use Cap’n.
“My Liege”
The Right Honorable
“Yo.”
Mx is common-ish among nonbinary people. Here’s a relevant poll regarding people’s usages of it: https://www.gendercensus.com/results/2023-mx/
Wow, I didn’t expect those results. Pretty impressive. Thanks for sharing!
Not a contemporary one, but during the French Revolution, they used ‘Citizen’ for everyone.
comrade
Which, in French, is “citoyen” (masculine) or “citoyenne” (feminine). Not a neutral gendered word.
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Well, it depends. Some nouns are epicene, like “enfant” or “adulte” (“un/une enfant/adulte”). Many adjectives are: “rapide”, solide", “mobile”…
But it is gender neutral in English, the language OP was asking about.
Tmw
︽cars are recognised as French citizens
My wife and I are both Dr. X
Liar!! You are are not “Dr. X”. You are “Dr. Cog”
Not since Elon Musk bought me for 44 billion dollars
Dr. Twitter???
Dr. The Site Formerly Known as Twitter
Do you both build creatures?
That’s professor X
