Sandra receives a telephone message:
"'We have received word from Admiral Michael'- Michael Falkayn, her second in command of the little Hermetian navy." ( X, p. 146)
Kindred are referred to by their first names. It is Sandra who reflects that "Admiral Michael" is Michael Falkayn. (She does this mainly to inform the readers.)
"Admiral Falkayn did not summon him aboard Alpha Cygni..." (p. 154)
The omniscient narrator of this passage does not observe the Hermetian custom but refers to the Admiral more normally by his surname.
When Eric Tamarin meets David Falkayn, he reflects:
"...I'd better think of him as 'Falkayn.' Most Earthlings seem to use their surnames with comparative strangers, like Travers, not the first name like Kindred and he's been long off Hermes." (XII, p. 176)
In this country, an earlier generation of men used to address close friends by their surnames, Holmes and Watson etc. If you are high enough up the social tree, then you are known by a first name preceded by a title, Prince Charles, Sir Ian etc. I have said before that, in my childhood, an elderly neighbor surprised me by referring to her gardener as "Smith," not Mr. Smith," but that had been appropriate during her earlier life.
A lecturer at Trinity College Dublin described one of his students as living in a clockwork universe to which he alone had the key and also as giving the impression of being on first name terms with authors that were long dead. (Nowadays, discussing someone's exam answers like that would count as breaking confidentiality.)
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, I too would find it a bit jarring to refer to an admiral by his title and then first name. E.g, think of how, centuries later, in the Flandry stories, we sometimes see Admiral Sir Thomas Walton. Both an admiral and a knight.
And I recall how often Holmes and Watson called each other by their surnames, with no consciousness of that being odd.
Ad astra! Sean
When I was at a British-run school in Kenya in the 1960's -- run by an Edwardian fossil who'd been born in British India in the 1880's and fought on the North-West frontier before 1914 -- we usually addressed each other by our last names. Only a few close friends used first names, and then only in informal situations.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Or even later! I've some of the characters in the Harry Potter movies addressing each other by their surnames. And those were British movies, btw.
Happy New Year! Sean
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