“Mrs. . . Mrs. . . , uh, . . . our girl guest!” This was the answer five-year old grandson Charlie spurted out when I asked who had given him the nifty ratchet set.

His answer tickled me. It was resourceful, plus I knew he was struggling to say the name “Mrs. Halbert,” the wife of Hank’s friend and long-ago Army-Band buddy Allan Halbert who is conducting a major building project for us. The work, like so many such projects, is stretching out longer than anticipated, so Allan’s wife Carolyn flew in to lend moral support. Of course, her appearance has made the whole thing more festive, especially late evenings when we sit down to eat.

But let’s return to the “girl guest” answer. Beyond smiling at Charlie’s answer, I knew that he understands the right way to identify an adult. The rule has been taught right along with “please” and “thank you.”

You see, I’m old school. Raised in an era when adults had no names other than Mr. and Mrs. (with an occasional school teacher named “Miss”), it never occurred to me to call an adult by a first name. Grownups were grownups; kids were kids. Adults weren’t trying to be our friends and we didn’t view adults as friends. The appellation Mr. or Mrs. expressed respect and acknowledged the distance between us.

Today, in a time when people wear what my mother would have called skimpy pajamas to the store, when unthinkable profanity blares from T-shirts, and public discourse is shorn of all gentility, we have kicked out yet another chink in the wall of civility by shifting our children to a so-called “friendly” first-name basis with adults. I’m not talking about saying Aunt Sue or Grandpa Bob (those names follow titles, for that matter). I’m talking about the habit today’s children acquire of addressing newly encountered adults by springing directly into what used to be called the Christian, or first name. Not only are the kids doing it, but adults seem to be fostering it!

First names, as well as the informal second-person pronouns, occupy a significant place in the Western world. English lost her informal thee, thou, and thine a long ago. Everybody became “you,” to the detriment of the language’s expressivity. But in most Western languages, the informal/formal divide is alive and well. Furthermore, an unspoken agreement must evolve between two people for the language-based barrier of formality to be removed. It remains a conscious, interpersonal decision.

Wouldn’t that be a bit silly in modern America? Well, it isn’t silly in countries like Germany, Spain, or Russia. We would be well-served if this system still existed in English.

The rules that regulated Western society have not changed, no matter how bad our contemporary behavior has become. Today’s website for Emily Post (whoever she or he might be) recommends that we

[t]each children to use adults’ titles, unless an adult specifically requests using his or her first name: “Mrs. Samson, this is my nephew, Benji Rosen. Benji, this is Mrs. Samson.”`

Another modern etiquette coach Callista Gould notes that she

 frequently hear[s] from people peeved at being called by their first name by interview candidates, customer service representatives, telemarketers and others they just met.

Parents with teens approaching the age for college interviews and the job market need to take particular note of this. A child raised to address their seniors as “Joe” and “Isabell” may not even realize this practice is inappropriate and off-putting in a professional circumstance.

Still another contemporary specialist, Maria Everding of The Etiquette Institute, gives this practical guideline:

If the person is old enough to be your parent, use an honorific, until that person tells you to call them by their first name.

She continues:

In business, err on the side of formality. The other person can always say, “Please call me (first name).” No harm, no foul. If you started out using a person’s first name and he or she was offended, you flunked your first impression.

I urge you to consider these statements if, indeed, your family practice has slipped into a different track. Look at the bigger picture. So many pieces in the mosaic of a polite society have come under “politically correct” attack or disintegrated into crudity or laziness: we’ve lost so many normal, civil conventions like holding open a door, leaving space for a car to change lanes, or turning around to help someone who has dropped an object. These actions were ordinary, not exceptional  gestures within daily life. They were regular practices expressing the moral fabric of our society, or used to be.

And while I understand the arguments some make against having kids address a new neighbor named Samuel Stevenson as Mr. Stevenson, I reject those arguments. If you don’t agree, then, at least with little children, consider the practice of adding Mr., Mrs., or Ms. to the first names so that they can refer to “Mr. Sam” who lives next door.

Put the whole matter under a magnifying glass as you explain to your kids the importance of how we speak to one another, how we employ appellations, and how formal appellations have an effect on human behavior. A child will accord more respect to a “Mr. Stevenson” than to a “Sam“ (whose name sounds just like the kid in their class). And, here’s a  sneaky secret: adults tend to act a bit more like adults when surrounded by appellations of respect, whether their demeanor deserves it or not.