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Readers may find interesting how the children were to address members
of staff and each other. The conventions here vary quite a bit from school to school and reflect in part the atmosphere at the school. Traditionally last names were used alng with additioins for brithers like Minor and Major. Today the conventions concerning how the staff and children are called are much more varied. The trend toward coeducation in the 1970s played a major role in creating the diversity found at the schools today. There is now a greater informality, but a number of schools are still quite formal.
Other than either Sir or Miss, the children usually refer to teaching
staff as Mr, Mrs or Miss and there surname eg Mr Smith and Mrs Jones. This was not universal, but the case at almost all of the schools. Addressing the other school staff such as the Matrons, Kitchen staff etc was more varied. Often they were referred to
by their first names eg Mr Alex, Mrs Susan or Miss Jane, Whether this was an attempt to make the
non-teaching side seem more friendly or to create a them and us divide
between the staff I don't know. In the 70s and 80s there were some
'progressive' schools which tried to do away with a lot of formality and
encouraged pupils to use the staffs first names eg Dave, John, Ann or Mary
etc etc. I don't know how that worked but it is not something we noticed and is not even some much considerd by the 2000s.
In many private schools it was common for pupils to be referred to purely by their surnames eg Smith, Jones etc. Brothers had additions such as major, minor, minimus added. Both the staff and the children among themselves adopted the use of last names.
A reader tells us, "At my old school, the listing was:-
Surname first, followed by initials, not first names. We called each
other by our surnames. First names were never used.
Brothers would be identified by e.g. Jones (i) Jones (ii) Etc, or Jones,
Jones (minor) and, even Jones (minimus).
The Jones' who were unrelated would be Jones followed by initial of the
first name or, if the initials were the same, the elder Jones was
Jones,J.H. (A) and the younger, Jones, J.H. (B). There were similar
traditions at other schools."
Some schools which went coed would at first refer to the boys by their surnames but the girls by their first names. This gradually evolved into first names for all. There is a convention, still used by more traditionalists, to list names
with males only referred to by their surname (family name) and initials and females by their surname and first name. Eg Smith A., Jones D., Smith Rebecca, Jones Alison etc. Most Asian, especially Chinese, pupils tend to choose an "English" first name to be called by. This can be amusing when names such as Windsor, Harrods, Buckingham and so on are chosen as these obviously have very English connotations but would never be used as first names in England (save
for by so called 'celebrities' who seem to look for the most outlandish and
embarrassing names for their children!). Most do opt for standard names such as Andrew, Peter, Susan, Alison etc. This is very considerate of them as they understand how difficult Westerners can find pronouncing their names but I would prefer to use their real names even if some Asian names are terribly long and tongue twister-ish. Many African origin names are also hard to pronounce correctly until you have heard them a few times (the spelling and sound do not always match) but it is my opinion that people should, out of respect, at least make an effort.
