That's Ms. to you, Bub

...Hence, the practice of calling patients, of whatever age or status, by first names...

...There is nothing wrong," she reminded me firmly, "in saying 'I prefer to be called Mrs...

...There were, however, even in those days, a few confrontational types who violated the unwritten rules but these were regarded as people for whom, in my grandmother's words, you "made allowances...

...This medical custom obviously has its roots in the exaggerated veneration in which doctors long were held in our society...

...These complexities and adjustments have all but disappeared in our society, as Mr...

...If any of these had first names we children never knew them...

...Whatever their reason, I would like to remind them that not so long ago feminists waged a struggle to have an honorific adopted to bridge the gap...

...Others think it is flattering...

...Your column reminded me that this kind of put-down can only continue for me as long as I allow it...

...But what is one to make of the prevalence of first-naming in doctors' offices, in hospitals, and nursing homes...

...For the brassy, one can, in my grandmother's terms, "make allowances...

...Raspberry half-humorously suggests, I think it is because the threads of the net of custom which hold any society together have, in ours, become frayed and broken...

...The exchange his column precipitated is evidence of the difficulty we experience in living amicably together in this last part of the twentieth century...

...All her friends were called by their first names—but not mere acquaintances...

...Therein lay a gray area...

...So were nurses...

...All younger people addressed their elders as "Mr...

...10 I think it is very likely that there are lonely old persons who welcome any call, no matter how the caller addresses them...

...Teachers in our town were called "Miss," as was the town librarian...

...Except for a very few close friends, my grandmother addressed her frequent callers as "Mrs...

...It's a very useful honorific—so call me Ms., please...

...Our real aunts were always addressed by title except for the two youngest who were "Abbie" and "Mamie," respectively...

...Raspberry's column...

...He calls himself Doctor__, but he and all his staff call me by my first name," wrote one woman...

...We children were still to address adults with respect but our mother's closest friends became honorary aunts—"Aunt Verne" and "Aunt Belle," for example...

...Martin did not completely approve...

...Does it go back to the uneasy practice of my mother's generation—the condemning of the working woman to perpetual maidenhood...

...I was foiled twice, however—once by a doctor with such a strange first name that I was sure it was never used...

...TO YOU, BUB ON THE ADVICE OF GRANDMOTHER & MISS MANNERS T oward the end of last year a provocative column appeared in the Washington Post...

...This has usually resulted in a retreat to "Mrs...

...Getting a job, going to work, made the difference in some cases...

...Of my remedy, Ms...

...If this dichotomy exists, as Mr...

...A retired psychiatrist ventured the opinion that it was a practice based in the physician's desire to distance himself from the patient as a person—to "objectify" him or her as an illness or complaint and thus to avoid a relationship with which the physician is not prepared, by either training or inclination, to deal...

...Lynch...

...This only underlines the fact that this use of first names is a commercial ploy and a demeaning one...

...One such salesman told Raspberry that the use of first names facilitated sales...

...It is possible that they did not even know what grandmother's first name was...

...I must admit that I, in the past, have countered rather obliquely by answering the doctor's opening, "Well, how are we today, Abigail...

...another by a cheerful, thick-skinned fellow who, on first sight, called me "Abbie" and continued to do so until he went off to accept a medical chair somewhere in Texas...

...To presume to it is demeaning...

...Why, in the last few years, have my priest and professional friends, even my old college friends— all of whom boast honorifics on their own return labels—decided to rob me of any when they address letters to me...

...These people should be made to understand, she says, that friendship is a privilege to be conferred...

...Judith "Miss Manners" Martin would emphatically agree with her...

...This rale held even though, small as the community was, there existed within it a complicated skein of social relationships...

...Raspberry's correspondence suggests...

...and Mrs...

...This was a second concern of those responding to Mr...

...Hawley" or "Mrs...

...Brokers especially seem to find the approach successful with such people...

...with "Just fine, John," or "Mark," or whatever his name might be...

...First names there were reserved for family, close intimates, and the contemporaries of the young...

...In trying to understand what has happened I have cast my mind back to the customs of the tight little community into which I was born...

...It was not clear when young people graduated into adulthood and the right to titles, because our community had no rites of passage like the coming-out parties of more sophisticated communities...

...It contains elements of "I'm as good as you are" and ageism...

...There were also a few town characters whom everyone called by their first names...

...Behind these customs there were undoubtedly generations of subtle adjustments—between people from different cultures, between generations, between the demands of democratic living and respect for differences of station...

...There are those who defend it as being more friendly...

...In a later column, Mr...

...This practice in medical offices is seriously demeaning and should not be tolerated...

...Its topic was hardly earth-shaking but it elicited a veritable blizzard of response—letters to the editor, letters to the columnist coming "from Hawaii to the Virgin Islands," even comment in other columns...

...or "Mrs...

...Stuven...

...Most of those who wrote to columnist Raspberry or his editor expressed their annoyance at being first-named by salespersons, especially those who invaded their privacy by what is called telemarketing...

...There is a dramatic instance of how hard it is to confront this in Doris Grumbach's Coming into the End Zone, the memoir of her seventieth year...

...As I mulled over the first-name phenomenon I realized that I was puzzled by a final concern...

...There may be an even darker explanation...

...This shows up in its most extreme form in teaching hospitals where patients are referred to as "the gallbladder in room 13" or "the cardiac in number 6." That the physician's habit of address should be copied by the staff is understandable but sometimes motivation of staff is more complex...

...McCarthy" the next time round, or the acceptance of the use of both first names...

...Many doctors, particularly those of the last generation, accepted this view of themselves...

...This measure of reserve and respect extended to the laundress who came on Mondays, French-Canadian Mrs...

...Judith Martin, my friend who writes a syndicated etiquette column under the name "Miss Manners," dubs both these explanations "patently phony...

...Leveille, and to the couple who came to stoke the coal stoves and light the kitchen fire on cold winter mornings, Dutch-born Mr...

...This respect was reciprocated by everyone in town, including the family doctor and the parish priest...

...But there seemed to be a consensus that if young women, even if assistant postmistress or a teller in a bank, were still called by their first names they were still considered eligible for marriage...

...But wouldn't that call for "Miss...

...These adjustments were still going on in my mother's generation...

...The original column by William Raspberry expressed his annoyance at strangers who presumed to call him by his first name...

...They were seen as quasi-godlike creatures privy to the secrets of life and death...

...So-and-So.' It is an unequal relationship in which he has assumed superiority...

...Brassiness has long been ascribed to salespersons—unfortunately for those who are perfectly nice...

...The reasons given for the ubiquitous firstnaming are various...

...Raspberry wrote, "To judge from the mail, there are only two kinds of people in America: those who go around calling strangers and other non-intimates by their first names and those who resent it" (Washington Post, December 20, 1993...