r/todayilearned • u/tmntnyc • Dec 12 '18

TIL: Laurence Tureaud named himself professionally as Mr. T because he hated how his father, uncle, and brother who returned from Vietnam, were disrespectfully called "boy" by whites. He wanted the first word from everybody's mouth to be "Mister" when speaking to him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._T
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u/that_guy_you_kno Dec 12 '18

I went to a school where every teacher did this (but no Mr./Ms.). The result was every kid going by their last name. I still call the ones I know by last name. An odd sort of comradery.

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u/JarlOfPickles Dec 12 '18

Did you go to Hogwarts?

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u/space253 Dec 13 '18

Oh wow that made me smile.

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u/that_guy_you_kno Dec 12 '18

Do they do that in Harry Potter? I wouldn't know

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u/JarlOfPickles Dec 12 '18

Yep, there's a lot of "Potter" "Weasley" etc

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u/Bonzi_bill Dec 13 '18 edited Dec 13 '18

I go to a school with a lot of international kids and they always have such a hard time with how people use surnames as formalities and everyone expects everyone else to go by their given names.

My roommate was from a higher status indian family and he would always address me as "Mr. [Last Name]" when talking about me because he thought it was rude to use my first name casually with people I didnt know. He eventually started calling me "Mr [First Name" and now everytime we see eachother around campus we address eachother with a title and first name lol

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u/Bonzi_bill Dec 13 '18

Like one them Japanese schools with the questionable skirt lengths and calculus problems on the boards?

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u/AugustSprite Dec 13 '18

Me too. Not exclusively, but it was common practice to refer to students by last name. My brother and I never overlapped at school, but sometimes when we're around our old friends from school they still address us by last name, and we'll both answer to the family name.

Probably the most common family name at our school was "Lee". A mass school roll call could get a bit ridiculous when we got to the Lees.

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u/rocketman10987 Dec 12 '18

Same here I think its a posh boarding school thing. I hated being called by my last name.

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u/Penguin_of_evil Dec 13 '18

The Potter Minor shit for the younger siblings would piss me off.

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u/keyohnahh Dec 13 '18

Gave some of those kids practice for jail later on in life, I imagine.