Must You Call Me by My Title?
“Good morning, Tony.” “No, you won't call me Tony…” A short exchange circulating online recently has generated considerable conversation about respect, titles, hierarchy, and how younger people should address older or more senior people. I am less interested in passing judgment on the people involved than in what the exchange made me think about. What does it actually mean to respect someone? And why do we so often locate respect in what we call them? I ask these questions as someone shaped by a culture in which names are rarely just names. How you address another person can say something about age, relationship, professional standing, familiarity, and respect.
Growing up in Nigeria, particularly within Yoruba culture, it would be unusual for a young person simply to address a significantly older person by their first name. There would ordinarily be something in between: Brother X, Sister X, Uncle X, Aunty X, Mr. X, Mrs X, Dr. X, Professor X, or another appropriate title. It is part of a larger culture of respect. Within Yoruba ideas of Ọmọlúàbí, respect is not merely an internal feeling. It is enacted. It can be communicated through language, greetings, gestures, comportment, and one's relationships with others. Depending on the context, younger people may bow or prostrate when greeting elders. Yoruba itself provides linguistic resources through which respect can be communicated.
Against this background, simply addressing an older and significantly more senior Nigerian as “Tony” at a formal public event can easily sound inappropriate. But I am increasingly interested in whether that settles the matter. My difficulty begins with a simple question: Does calling someone by their first name actually make us disrespect them? My own experience complicates the answer. I grew up addressing my siblings by their names, including siblings older than me. Some Nigerians might immediately find something uncomfortable about that. I, however, cannot recognize any relationship between calling them by their names and the respect I have for them. They remain my older siblings. I know what they mean to me. The absence of a title has never erased the relationship.
My experience in academia has complicated things even further. Many Nigerians who move into North American or European universities discover something initially uncomfortable. Professors and supervisors often ask students to call them by their first names. For someone formed within Nigerian academic culture, this can feel almost unnatural. You write “Dear Professor…” and receive a reply signed “David.” You continue with “Professor…” Eventually, perhaps, the professor says, “Please, call me David.” And even then, it can take time. I have had conversations with fellow Nigerians about precisely this difficulty. It is not pretence. We have been formed within a cultural world in which titles communicate something important about relationships. Removing the title can initially feel as though we are removing the respect.
However, something interesting can happen with time. You discover that calling your supervisor by their first name does not necessarily diminish your respect for them. Sometimes, it creates a certain relational freedom. Conversation becomes easier. Intellectual disagreement becomes less intimidating. Hierarchy does not disappear, the professor remains the professor and the student remains the student, but the relationship can become less burdened by its constant performance. That has made me wonder whether we sometimes confuse the expression of respect with respect itself.
There is something valuable in African cultures of respect that I would be reluctant to surrender. I do not think every society must organize relationships according to Western norms simply because those norms appear less hierarchical. If Yoruba communities understand certain gestures and forms of address as meaningful expressions of respect, outsiders cannot simply announce that these practices are backward and should disappear. Cultures are entitled to inhabit their own moral worlds. If prostrating, bowing, using respectful pronouns, or employing titles carries meaning within a community, then understanding that context matters. But respecting a cultural practice does not prevent us from asking questions about it.
Does respect always require hierarchy? Can titles sometimes create unnecessary distance? Can insisting upon them prevent the kind of intellectual or professional relationships in which younger people feel able to question those above them? And perhaps more importantly: can someone observe every convention of respectful address and still behave profoundly disrespectfully? Surely the answer is yes. A person can call me “Professor,” “Doctor,” or “Sir” while treating me terribly. Another can call me Ikeoluwapo, or Ike, and relate to me with extraordinary respect. That distinction matters.
The issue becomes even more complicated when we move between cultural worlds. There is a familiar saying, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” There is some wisdom in it. If I work within a culture where colleagues ordinarily address one another by their first names, insisting that everyone use my academic title may communicate something I do not intend. Likewise, if someone from that culture enters a Nigerian setting, assuming that the same first-name convention automatically applies may communicate disrespect even when none was intended. But “when in Rome” cannot mean that we simply abandon everything that formed us.
Living between cultures requires something more difficult: judgment. I continue to experience this myself. When I encounter a Nigerian academic who is considerably older or more senior than I am, I sometimes hesitate before using their first name—even when we are both working in a Canadian environment where first-name address is entirely ordinary. Part of me knows the professional culture in which we are situated. Another part remembers the culture that formed me. Neither simply disappears. And perhaps neither needs to.
This is where I return to the exchange that prompted this reflection. Rather than establishing a universal rule that younger people must always use titles or that modern workplaces should abolish them, perhaps we need context, familiarity, and permission. When I do not know someone well, I would rather begin with the form of address that recognizes the relationship as I understand it. “Dr. X.” “Professor X.” “Mr. X.” “Mrs. X.” “Chairman.” Whatever the relevant context reasonably calls for. Then something can happen in the relationship. “Please, call me X.” At that point, the relationship has supplied information that the title alone could not.
This is not entirely different from asking people how they would like to be addressed. Rather than assuming that everyone shares our understanding of hierarchy, familiarity, and respect, we allow people some agency in determining how they are addressed. My own experience has taught me why this matters. Years ago, while working as a teaching assistant in Nigeria, I asked students to address me by my first name rather than “Mr. Ike.” My intention was simple. I wanted a freer relationship with them. I was co-teaching and did not feel that insisting upon a title was necessary. But I later discovered that some students interpreted the gesture quite differently. Some apparently wondered whether my invitation to use my first name, together with the way I interacted in class, meant that I had some romantic interest in particular students. Within their cultural frame, my attempt to reduce hierarchy communicated something I had never intended. That experience stayed with me. Good intentions do not eliminate context.
This is perhaps where my position may sit uneasily with some interpretations of Ọmọlúàbí. I do not think being an Ọmọlúàbí should mean accumulating titles or requiring younger people constantly to perform one’s status. But neither do I think Ọmọlúàbí requires us to pretend that culturally meaningful practices of respect do not matter. Perhaps an Ọmọlúàbí begins with attentiveness. You recognize the person before you. You recognize the relationship. You recognize the culture within which the encounter occurs. You do not assume familiarity where none has been established. But neither do you mistake hierarchy for virtue. In Yoruba interaction, one may initially employ ẹ, the respectful form of address, not because the other person is necessarily morally superior, but because respect is the appropriate starting posture. As familiarity develops, relationships find their own language.
Perhaps that offers us something useful. Begin with respect. Allow familiarity to negotiate the rest. For me, that seems preferable to either extreme. I am uncomfortable with a world in which every relationship must constantly announce rank: Professor, Doctor, Chairman, Chief, Honourable, Sir. But I am equally uncomfortable with assuming that because first-name address feels liberating in one cultural setting, everyone everywhere must experience it in the same way. Respect cannot be reduced to titles. But titles are not always meaningless either. They can communicate achievements, relationships, cultural expectations, professional responsibilities, or the distance that appropriately exists between two people who do not yet know one another.
Perhaps the question is whether we have learned to read the person, the relationship, and the context before us. I am perfectly comfortable being called Ikeoluwapo—or Ike. But that is something I can tell you. And perhaps therein lies the principle I have arrived at. Do not assume familiarity. Begin with respect. Learn the context. And where possible, let people tell you how they wish to be addressed. Because ultimately, respect is larger than whatever comes before, or after, a person’s name.
