Thanks for bringing this up – it is a cause I have championed for some time but I sometimes feel like a voice in the wilderness. Of course, I come from a time when the idea of calling one’s teacher by their first name was not only unheard of, but even hearing another adult address them that way seemed strange.

Calling someone by the name printed on their boarding pass is not just presumptuous; it is also very likely to not be a name that they use at all. My legal name is a first initial and middle name, which in and of itself causes no shortage of trouble and confusion. But that aside, no one who knows me would ever call me by my middle name (Charles) either. They would not do so twice anyway. I often have TSA screeners call me "Charles" which I find grating, and have even had them some of them call me "Charlie" (shiver) which is WAY worse. A stranger calling me Mister so-and-so (a common name that is, for whatever reason, completely unpronounceable below the Mason-Dixon line) at least gives me the option of saying "please, call me Chuck." Starting with the respectful position gives the other person the option to extend the familiar. But on the upside, it provides a great shibboleth to filter out presumptuous telemarketers. "Hello, Charles?" [click]. "Hello, Charlie?" [SLAM].

It’s not just at security of course. On a recent SWA flight, the gate agent made it a point of reading the first name of every passenger out loud as they handed over their boarding pass, and would say, for example, "Welcome aboard, Mildred" to a woman old enough to be his grandmother, and who is probably used to much more respect than that. Not everyone wants to have their name announced to everyone around them and it was clear by their expressions that many more people were made uncomfortable by this than were made to feel welcome.