Comment by sumanthvepa
5 days ago
It's interesting. My closest friends use my last name, while everyone else uses my first name at work. Apparently it was a hangover from the custom at old British public schools that some old Indian schools retained into the 70s/80s. I sort of like it.
Same here, but the reason is simple - there was a bunch of people with the same first name in my class (1st grade). So we all went by our last name. And, as those still are close friends of mine, after all these decades, they (and everyone else I know from that time) use my last name when addressing me. And other people sometimes pick it up and use it too..
I went to a British private school (which we also call "public schools" to annoy Americans) and it was certainly still hanging on there into the 80s.
My brother attended the same school where we briefly overlapped so I was by default "Minter" and when the distinction was needed I was "Minter Minor" and he would have been "Minter Major".
Like many things it doesn't make much sense in retrospect.
Edit: People do still often call me "Mister Minter" where I'd expect them to use my first name, but I think they just like the alliteration. It's not old schoolfriends doing it.