Personal Pronouns / First Names

[AvidReader]

Well, yes, "Katie," vs. "Kathleen" seems unexceptionable.  But where does one stop?  If one is "Donald" on the roster, but the person says, "I prefer, 'Your Lordship, Don,'" when does one smile and when does one acquiesce?  The boundary between "Sure, OK, I'll note that" and "Wha?" is not easy to find. 

I'd say the boundary is at exactly the moment when they cease telling you what name to call them and start assuming titles. In fact, I ran into exactly this situation. A student gave me the option of calling them a really silly name (not at all similar to the roster) or a title+other name (also not at all on the roster). So I called them the silly name.

I try to head this off at the outset by stating that I will call them by their preferred form of address (once I learn it) as long as it is acceptable in a professional setting. Because I do a lot of group work, I especially don't want to put other students in the position of feeling obliged to refer to one another in ways that make anyone feel uncomfortable. This would include names containing expletives*, nicknames or titles that could make another student feel inferior, or nicknames that are distracting. I've had many nicknames that don't match roster names, but I've never had a student request an appellation that I thought crossed the line.

*Some of my foreign students do have names with English language expletives embedded. I'm just very, very careful to pronounce these exactly as the students did; usually the emphasis is in a differing part of the name.

AR.

[Caracal]

I try to head this off at the outset by stating that I will call them by their preferred form of address (once I learn it) as long as it is acceptable in a professional setting.....
but I've never had a student request an appellation that I thought crossed the line.


AR.

Right, because this is not actually a problem. Nobody wants to be known as Sir Poopypants and there's not some pandora's box of students waiting for the chance to be called something ridiculous.

[downer]

Will your school be celebrating International Pronouns Day, Oct 16?
https://pronounsday.org/

[pgher]

An article relevant to this discussion: https://serendipitydodah.wordpress.com/2019/07/29/thats-a-really-good-question-5-can-i-just-use-someones-name-instead-of-trying-to-use-they-them-pronouns

[phattangent]

On these situations, I speak and write as I normally do. If someone asks me to use a different pronoun when I refer to them, then I will do my best to accommodate. I have yet to encounter any direct offense to this approach. That is, if my doing this has offended someone, then they didn't tell me.