What’s in a name?

Names are vital to our identities, but sometimes we’re really quite cavalier with them. Well, I’m not. Try to shorten my first name and I’ll drop you from my Christmas card list faster than you can say ‘electrochemistry is tricky’. And after taking years as a child to master spelling my last name, there is no way I’d change it for anyone or anything. I’m also wedded to Ms – on the basis that it’s no-one’s concern whether I’m married or not.

But I’m not a teacher. And for teachers, your name and how learners use it can be complex. In the UK and Ireland, and I believe most English-speaking nations, it’s usual for learners to call their teachers by their title (or honorific) and surname, Mrs Doubtfire and Mr Bean. But when pupils appeal to a teacher, or address a teacher they don’t know, they use Miss and Sir. And I know some schools prefer Madam and Sir, but both strike me as antiquated.

Looking up a dictionary definition for Sir, I understand more about why it’s used: a formal or polite term of address for a man. That makes sense in the context of the learner–teacher relationship. But what about Miss or Madam? Well, according to dictionary.com, Miss is a title for a girl or an unmarried woman, used generally for those ‘unmarried and under 30’. The dictionary describes Madam as a polite term of address for a woman, especially one considered to be of relatively high social status. Madam makes sense in this context, just as Sir does. But Miss? Are we still using terminology that not only has age connotations, but predates the second world war?

You couldn’t be a married woman and a teacher until the 1944 Education Act – that’s the same act that provided free secondary education in England and Wales (Scotland followed suit in 1945). One of the reasons was that a married woman’s job was to look after their husband and children, but don’t get me started on that. Instead, let’s consider how archaic it is that learners routinely call women teachers Miss because 80 years ago a Mrs couldn’t be a teacher.

For that reason, I may be coming around to the idea of Madam and Sir. They’re both respectful and neither has age nor marital status connotations. But then again, in some countries, China and Japan for example, learners say Lǎoshī and Sensei, which mean teacher respectively. Teacher is accurate, respectful and inclusive.

I’d love to get into a discussion of the gendering of title, or why and when women teachers change their names after marriage, but there’s not enough room. Maybe I’ll come back to those in the future, once we’ve debated the pros and cons of switching to Teacher.