Comment by jlmcguire
5 days ago
My experience is this mostly between men and generally not as common as it used to be.
My dad is called by his surname by some of his high school pals and call some of them by surname when he's around them (but not in reference to them if he's talking to me). Thinking back to my high school days in the late 00's I can only remember athletes being called by their last name. Perhaps because of football or sports that you just have your last name on your jersey. It would be an interesting thing to understand more.
I could be regional too. I'm from the US in the midwest.
This is what we used to do, because in one friend group there would be 3 mikes and 2 steves. At some point, you have to use nicknames or last names.
Nicknames include variations like Mikey, Mickey, Mikail, Big Michael, Little Michael, Gas Station Michael, Angry Michael, Tony (obligatory wrong name your group uses because there were already too many Michaels and this Michael liked his middle name)
and Mike.
a lot of the time its just a nickname. public schools in the US are huge and then when it comes to sports the athletes are visiting other schools. before i knew it id meet 12 new Jakes every year so everyone goes by nicknames or last name
theres an occasional phenomenon in the US, often referenced in sitcoms, where an individuals entire first and last name sticks as their "nickname"
In my high school (Massachusetts, USA), almost all the students went by their last names, or something related to their last names. Ashley Milford was Milf, Samantha St. Paul was Saint Paul, Ryan Leonard was Lenny, Kevin Doo was Kevin Doo, for example. I'm still my surname in my head.
I learned later that we had a reputation for being a jock school though, because we all had to play a sport each semester.
There's also the "when you say Mr. lastname, I turn around and look for my father" type of responses when using someone's last name.