Re: First report on Coní

Andreas Johansson wrote:
  > The Tairezans place the personal name before the family name. With
friends and
> family you use only the first name, in formal situation the full name. You don't
> typicall adress someone with only a family name - it's either only personal
> (informal situation) or both names (formal ones). If you speak/write about
> someone you do not personally know, you typically use both names the first time,
> and then further references to the person in question uses only the family name.
That's more-or-less the normal way of doing it in English countries,
isn't it? (Though I know of people---myself included---who don't like
being called by their surname, and people you normally call by their
surname.)

> Since using a full name about someone you know well when speaking to someone who
> also knows the person well might be construed as unfriendlily formal, it's more
> common to distinguish bearers of the same personal name by adding nick-names
> than to resort to full names (ie, you speak of "Bob Brown" and "Bob Green" as
> "little Bob" and "big Bob", or whatever)
Well, if you were doing that in Australia, you might call 'Bob Brown'
'Green Bob'---the leader of the Green party is (Senator, but titles are
rarely used) Bob Brown.

Tristan.

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