“When should I use Mr., Ms., Miss, Dr., Teacher...?” | English Titles and Addressing People

Hello, my name is Emma. Today we will learn about the words Mr., Mrs., Miss, Ms., along

with other job titles like doctor, professor,

judge, officer, etc. So today we will learn

how do we address somebody in English. So, to

be honest, it can be very confusing for people,

whether you are somebody who is learning

English or also for native speakers of English.

There's a lot of confusion. What do we call somebody? We don't want to be rude,

so how do we address them? So, I will explain how to address different people

in different situations, but first, let's think about these scenarios.

When do you use Mr., Mrs., and Miss? So, think about when would you use that

versus when do you use a person's first name? If

you met me, what would you call me? Would you call

me Miss White, Emma? Would you call me Teacher

Emma? What would you call me if you met me?

What should students call their teachers? What should students call their professors?

What should you call your boss? Do you use your boss's first name,

or do you call him or her Mr. or Miss? What should you call an elderly person?

So, imagine a 90-year-old woman. Do you

call her by her first name or her last name?

What should you call your friend's parents?

So, your friend has some parents, you see them,

what do you say to them? Do you call them by their first name or their last name?

And also job titles. In English, some jobs have

a title, so for example, Doctor, Professor,

Judge. So, we'll look at which jobs do you

use a title and when do you not use a title.

So, let's better understand these situations

because this is something important,

and it happens a lot. What should we call somebody when we meet them? All right. So,

let me tell you the general rule, and then we'll look at different scenarios.

In general, in North America, we are not very

formal in the way we address someone. We usually

use a person's first name, in general. If you're

not sure, what you do is you pay attention to how

someone introduces themselves. So, if they say,

"Hi, I'm Emma," then you use their first name.

If they say, "Hi, I'm Mrs. Smith," then you use

Mrs. Smith. In general, people use their first

name. You can also look at an email. If somebody

sends you an email and they sign the email with

their first name, use their first name. If they

sign the email Mr. or Miss, then use that. And

we'll look at more specific examples in a moment,

but first, I wanted to look at what the different

common ways to address somebody are. So, you've probably heard "Mr."

"Mr." stands for "Mr." and then we have a person's last name. So, for example,

"Mr. Trump", "Mr. Obama", "Mr. Trudeau",

"Mr. Johnson". So, these are all examples of people's last names. And we use "Mr."

specifically with men. So, if you hear the word

"Mr.", you know they're talking about a man.

So, we also have, in English, "Mrs." "Mrs." is spelt M-R-S, and it has two syllables,

"Mrs." And we use this when we're talking about

a married woman and we're using her last name.

So, for example, "I had a teacher, Mrs. Todd."

Or, "I had another teacher, Mrs. Inglis."

Both of these teachers were married, and they both liked to use "Mrs."

Now, I should mention that nowadays, a lot of

women don't use "Mrs." It was more common in the

past, but nowadays it's becoming less common.

You will probably see this more with the older

generation than the younger generation. So, a

lot of women will actually use "Ms." So, "Ms."

is M-S, and what this means - and again, we have

it with the last name - is it means it's a woman,

but we don't know if she's married or not, and

it's not important. So, if you use "Ms." it means

it's... The main point you're getting across

is you're a woman. You're not saying if you're

married or single. So, you could say, like, "Ms."

Let me think of a celebrity. "Ms. Swift" for Taylor

Swift. "Ms. Perry" for Katy Perry. This has

actually become more popular than "Mrs." So,

if you don't know what to call a woman and you

want to use her last name, it's probably better

to use "Ms." than "Mrs." We also have "Miss".

"Miss" meaning M-I-S-S. It looks similar to this,

but there is two extra letters here. We use

"Miss" for young girls. So, I might call a student

who is maybe seven years old. If she's a female

student, I might say, you know, "Miss. Miss Jones."

Again, it's not being used as much as it used to in the past,

but we would use this for a very young girl or

a young woman. Like, I would say maybe a child.

You might also see this one being used, "Mx."

"Mix" plus the last name. This is new. I think

it started in maybe the 2010s. And so, it's becoming common in some countries. Well,

it's becoming more used in some countries like

England. So, you might see this. And what it

means is you don't want to say what a person's

gender is. So, they don't want to say if they're

a man or a woman or something else, so they might use "Mx" and the last name.

This could become more popular in the future.

It's not so common now, but maybe it will be.

Who knows? I wanted to also point out that all

of these are more formal than using a person's

name. So, when you use these, you're either

doing it because you really want to show respect,

and it's a very formal situation. A lot of the

times, people feel uncomfortable being called

"Mr." or "Ms." because they find it too formal,

and they would actually prefer for you to just

use their first name. So, let's look at some

specific examples of this and figure out what

is common in North America. So, let's look at the

first scenario. You have a boss, and you want to

know what do you call your boss. Do you say "Mr.

Jones" or whatever your boss's last name is?

Do you say "Ms. Jones" or your boss's last name if it's a woman or if it's a man,

or do you use their first name? So, this is a

great question, and again, people get confused

with this, but in general, in North America, you

would use your boss's first name. At all of the

companies I have worked, in many different

settings from education to research to healthcare,

I have always called my boss by their first name. So, in general, use the first name.

If you're unsure, when you first start, you

can ask, "What should I call you? Do you prefer

James or Mr. Jones?" And then they can tell you

what they prefer. Or another method is see how

they sign an email. If they sign an email

with their first name, use their first name.

Or if they tell you, you know, "Call me by

my first name. Call me Emma. Call me Scott."

Whatever they tell you, do. So, many people

continue to use Mr. or Ms., but people prefer

often for the first name to be used,

especially if they say, "Use my first name."

What about your boss's boss or the manager, somebody higher up in the company? What do

you call somebody higher up? In general, we use

their first name. Again, you can see how your boss

talks to them, but usually we use first names in North America.

Alright, well, let's look at some other situations. A question I get a lot is,

"What do I call my teacher?" I'm a teacher, and so this is a very good question.

So, what do you think? Should you call your

teacher Mr., if it's a man, or Ms., if it's a

woman, with their last name? Or should you use

the teacher's first name? Before I answer this,

I just also wanted to point out the pronunciation

of "Ms." It actually has a "zed" sound at the

end, so you'll hear me say "Ms." So, should you

call your teacher, for example, imagine your

teacher's name is Steele, first name Julia Steele.

Julia Steele, what would you call your teacher?

Well, the answer is a bit complicated because

it depends on your age. If you are a child,

you would use Mr. and Ms. It's the same with

high school students. So, if you're in school

or high school, you would use Mr. or Ms. So,

you could say Mr. Steele if it was a man,

Ms. Steele if it was a woman. But what about for adults or for college students?

Once you are an adult, you would change to the

first name. So, if you had an English teacher

like me, you would call me Emma. You would not

use my last name. You would just say, "Oh, hi,

Emma." So, you can call me by my first name.

It's true with the other teachers. On EngVid,

you know, you can call James by his first name, Ronnie, Gill, etc.

Okay, so we are all teachers. What about a

professor? Sometimes people call me professor,

but that's not correct because I am not a

professor. I'm a teacher. The difference is a

professor is somebody who teaches at the

university or college level, and usually they

have a doctorate, so they have a high-level degree

in something. So, we could call a university,

somebody at the university, "professor", and

you would actually use that word. You would say,

"Professor Steele", or you might use their first name depending on the professor,

but usually we would use their last name for a professor at university or college.

What about somebody like me? Would you ever call me with the word "teacher" in front,

like "Teacher Emma" or "Teacher Steele"? The

answer is no. We do not use "teacher" in front

of names. Many people learning English do this.

They'll say, "Teacher James", "Teacher Rebecca",

"Teacher Gill", but culturally, we do not use the

word "teacher" as a title in front of our names.

So, again, for regular teachers, you just call

them by their first name. If you're an adult,

if you're a child, you call them by "Mr." or "Ms." and their last name.

All right. So, what about in an email? Imagine

this situation. You need to write an email to

somebody. You know their name, but you have

never met them before. What do you do? Do you use

"Mr." or "Ms." and the last name, depending on if it's a man or a woman,

or do you just use their first name? Well, in

general, with emails, what most people do is

when they communicate with a customer or someone they don't know, they haven't met,

they often will start with "Mr." or "Ms." and the

last name in the first email. So, they'll say,

"Dear Mr. Jones" or "Hello, Ms. Perez." So, they

often will use the last name in the first email,

and then they wait for the person to write back. So, when they get the response,

then what they do is they look at the bottom of

the email to see how the person would sign the

email. Do they use their first name or their

last name? So, what you can do is you can always,

if somebody writes to you, once they write to you,

look to see after "sincerely" or "kind regards",

look to see how they sign the email and use that

in the way you address them in the next email.

So, start formal with "Mr." and "Ms." and then look at what they do in their email

and just follow their lead. If they use their

first name in the next email, you use their first

name in your email. Okay, here's another common

situation that a lot of people don't talk about,

but I think it's an interesting one. So, you

have friends and your friends have parents,

and maybe you go to your friend's house or a

wedding or some event where you are talking to

their parents. What would you call your friend's

parents? Would you call them "Mr." and "Ms." and

use their last name, or would you call them by

their first name? In general, I know for me,

I call most of my friend's parents actually by

their last names - "Mr.", "Ms." with their last

name - until they tell me to call them by their

first name. So, I have a really good friend

whose last name is Noel, so I call her parents

"Mr." and "Ms. Noel". If you're watching "Mr." and

"Ms. Noel", hello, so I would address them by

their last name unless they say, "Hey, Emma,

please call me by my first name." In that case,

I would switch, but they haven't told me to call

them by their first name, so I still use "Mr."

and "Ms." So, let's look at two more situations.

What should you call a really old person? So,

by that, I mean an elderly person or a senior.

What would you call somebody who's 90 years

old? Would you call them by their first name,

or would you call them "Mr." or "Ms." and their

last name? Well, the answer is it depends.

Some people prefer their first names, and they'll

tell you that. I - usually what I do is I would

use "Mr." or "Ms." and their last name if I don't

know them well, and then they might say, "Oh,

please call me Joan," or, "Please call me Bill,"

and then I would use their first name. But often

with really much older adults, I would usually

use "Mr." or "Ms." until they tell me to call them

by something different. And again, when I'm

talking about older, I'm talking more like 80

or 90-year-olds. I'm not talking about 50 or

60-year-olds. There's often a generational

difference. Okay, what about jobs? Let's talk a

little bit about jobs. There are some jobs where

I do use a title. So, for example, I already

talked about "Professor", so I called my professors

"Professor Copeland", "Professor Faraday". So,

I would use "Professor" and their last name

unless they told me to call them by their first name.

If there's a judge, I would call them "Judge"

and their last name. So, "Judge Scheindlin",

"Judge Brown", for example. It's the same with

doctors. I would call a doctor by their last name,

so "Dr. Steeves" or "Dr. Muchelli", so I would use the last name.

For police officers, I would also use their last

name. So, if I met a police officer, I would say

"Officer Smith", "Officer"... I can't think of another last name, but "Officer Jones".

So, I would do that until they tell me to use their first name. Same with religious

people. So, people who work in churches or mosques or synagogues or temples,

we would use their specific religious title and

then their last name. So, you might have "Rabbi"

and then their name. You might have "Father" if

they're Catholic, and then the name. "Pastor"

with the last name, depending on the type of Christian somebody is.

Or you might have "Pastor" and the first name. That's possible, too.

You might do the same with "Imam". So, depending on the religion,

you often will use the title and then the person's last name.

Same with military. If somebody holds a military

title, you would use that to address them,

especially if you don't know them. This is all different if you're friends or family

with these people, but if you don't know somebody

and you're talking to them, then you usually

would use their titles. So, you might call

somebody "Lieutenant" or "Sergeant" and their

last name, for example. And then it's the same

with government officials. You might say "Prime

Minister Trudeau" or "President Bush" or "Ambassador Johnson", "Mayor Quimby". So,

you might use different, you know, you would

use the title and then their last name.

So, we've covered a lot, and the main thing I

want you to remember is, in general, first names

are what you should be using. There are some

exceptions, but in general, in North America,

in most situations and contexts, we prefer first

names, but if you don't know, you can always ask

somebody, "What should I call you? What do you

like to be called?" All right, thank you so much

for watching today's lesson. Titles can be

confusing, so I'm glad we were able to look at

many different situations and whether to use

the first name or Mr. and Ms., depending on the

situation. So, I recommend you check out our

website at www.EngVid.com, because there you

can find a quiz where you can practice what you

learned today. Remember, practice makes perfect.

You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel. We

have a lot of videos on many different topics,

including learning English, study skills, pronunciation, and so much more.

So, thank you so much for watching, and until next time, take care.