Why I’d rather be called mate, sir or Mr Moore, than Charles

Would you like to be called Charles or Mr Moore?’ my bank asked me when I rang with a query. In the past I have always responded ‘Charles’, because it sounds pompous to insist on one’s surname. But the truth is that I would much rather be called ‘Mr Moore’, or ‘sir’, or ‘mate’, than be addressed by my Christian name by people I have never met. So this time I plucked up courage and said, ‘Mr Moore, please.’ There was an intake of breath at the other end. I got the impression that no one says what I had just said: the only correct answers are ‘Charles’ or ‘I don’t mind’. My interlocutor could not bring herself to name me at all for the rest of the conversation.

In Heaven, your given name is the only one that the authorities will recognise, but on Earth surnames are needed to maintain the psychologically important difference between friends, family and colleagues on the one hand, and the billions whom one does not know from Adam on the other.