I’m Laura on the blog, and I’m Laura in real life. The whole last name and title thing is so confusing and so full of politics that I rarely use them. My only exception is if I’m with someone who insists that I use a title for them, then they have to refer to me as Dr.
What title do you prefer? Miss, Mrs, Ms, Dr, Prof, Yo? Did you change your name?
Apt. 11d 
I have always been partial to Coach, but I have never been successful in getting anyone to call me that. So I’ll settle for Professor. But for some reason I’ve never been able to discern, the name plate on my door, provided by the university, says Mr.
Doctor? I dunno. I had a colleague who insisted on that; behind his back we said things like “I wonder if he scrubs up before class?”
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There’s really no good answer for an unemployed Ph.D., is there?
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“Ms/Mrs/Miss” drives me round the bend — that’s my MOTHER, don’t they know that?!?!
U.Topia is a “professor” school, rather than being a “doctor” school, as my undergrad institution was, and most students default to “Professor Trotsky.” I tell them on the first day of class that they are welcome but not required to call me “Meg.”
I have, however, noticed that making reservations goes a little smoother if I preface my name with “Doctor.” I only do it if they’ve already ladled out a large serving of attitude, though, and even then I feel guilty.
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If you’re my student or a local bureaucrat, I’m “Dr. the Red.” If you’ve met me since I started grad school and you aren’t my student, I’m Warren. If you knew me before grad school, I’m Smitty. If you’re a friend of my daughter’s, I’m “Mr. Emily’s Dad” or “Mr. the Red.” If you’re Emily, I’m “Daddy” or (when you really want something) “Superdaddy.”
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My school’s a “professor” school, too. Which is just as well b/c then students don’t have to worry about getting my last name right, since they often just say, “professor,” no last name. My grad school was a “doctor” school. Personally, I like doctor or professor, though professor sounds better with my last name (if you put doctor in front of my last name I sound kind of like an evil scientist or cheesy DJ). My last job, everyone – and I mean EVERYONE – went by first names, which I actually grew to like a lot. B/c even the crusty old white guys went by first names, there wasn’t a lot of distinction between the male and female profs. But I did get “Ms. Hallway” on occasion, and I have to say that it drove me nuts, and in re: the Crooked Timber thread, I *do* think women get this much more than men (I was surprised at how surprised CT commenters seemed to be by this idea!).
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Students here greet us on the street with “Hi, Professor!” which took a lot of getting used to. Occasionally I’ll reply, “Hi, Student!” but they just look at me funny, instead of laughing.
Or maybe it’s the way I dress.
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I’ve always been at Professor or Mr. schools.
Dr. strikes me as tacky.
My friend who is a real doctor (I’m sorry, but there is a difference; and the academy isn’t the real world either) finds the doctor title pretentious outside of his practice.
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I like Princess, but most people think you’re joking and so they never really stick with it.
Pinky and Baby Catie have also fallen by the wayside.
I like being called Mrs.
And even though it’s tragically unhip in feminist circles I did change my name when I got married. Amazingly, no one took away my vagina or my right to vote.
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I prefer Ms. since I’m not a Dr. I’ve been married for so long and at such a young age that most of my friends only know me by my married last name.
What REALLY will make my blood boil is being Mrs. Spouse’s first & lastname. I have a first name of my own!
I think if i had pursued my teaching certificate as i had once planned, i would have kept my maiden name just to be Mrs. B. (many of the teacher in my family go by the initial because our last name is so long) I would have really hated Mrs. Holmberg. That’s my husband’s grandmother not me!
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And even though it’s tragically unhip in feminist circles I did change my name when I got married. Amazingly, no one took away my vagina or my right to vote.
heh-heh.
re: Prof v. Dr. The Dr. title was more common than Prof when I taught at an education school. I’m not really sure why.
Mostly the title I go by these days is Mom preferably said with a long drawn out whine and an eye roll.
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I did change my name when I got married even though I had a full blown career, but I confess it was due to my killer combination of a difficult first and last name (difficult meaning easy to mispronounce).
In the last ten years the formality shift has been such that nobody calls me anything but my first name ( except the teachers at my child’s school and the children of the most Southern parents I know) which gets rid of the whole Mrs. / Ms. / Miss issue.
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I used Miss for a very long time. It’s only within the last few years that I’ve begun to use Ms. Being a newly minted Ph.D. it is really strange to hear people call you Dr. I have one student who called me “Dr. P”–hmmm….Emily Post has an entire section on “titles,” and of course I was just dying to know what she had to say. Only MD’s ought to use the title of Dr., whereas Ph.Ds. are Mr./Ms. and attorneys don’t have any title! Esq. appears after their name!
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I may be old fashioned, but I like the titles. My children call all adults (with very few exceptions) Mr./Mrs./Ms. You get the idea. It is probably because I am southern, but it is just respectful and a distinction between the child and the adult. That being said, even though I am a lawyer, I never use Esq. because it is stuffy and all my professors in college were Mr. and Mrs. which was fine. The reverse snobbery theory was that they all had PhDs so there was no need to call attention to it.
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At my institution faculty are “Dr.” to undergrads (unless we don’t have Ph.D.s, in which case we are “Professor”), and generally use first names with graduate students.
I’ve only used “Dr.” once outside academia, when my optometrist’s secretary was shirty and the ink wasn’t even dry on my diploma. And I still cringe every time she uses it.
I was advised never to use “Dr.” when booking a flight unless you want to end up doing CPR on someone high above the Atlantic.
Re. surnames: I kept mine. Silly, perhaps, as it is so common, but it’s my name, so whaddaya gonna do? We gave our child both names and a hyphen, and now I regret it. My spouse’s name is unique — practically everyone with that name is related — so in retrospect I wish we had just gone with that and saved our kid the trouble of the double-barrelled name.
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Addendum: On the other hand, the double name makes perfect sense to our child: I am Jane Doe and dad is John Smith and so Doe-Smith is logical.
Final note: I do like the idea of kids automatically taking the mother’s surname, as they do in some cultures. Don’t think that would have flown with my in-laws, though.
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I didn’t change my name. Never wanted to, spouse didn’t care. Except he hates when people call him Mr. Ryan. heh.
And by the way, there was a small to-do at the paper when I started — they wanted me to change my byline to Maureen Ryan instead of Mo Ryan, cuz Maureen would prove that they had girls at the paper.
So the combined nagging of my editors and my mom got me to change my first name, in print anyway, to Maureen. Actually what put me over the edge was people (not raised in the South Side Irish community, clearly) who thought Mo was short for Maurice.
Yes, they used to call me Maurice. But at no point did I speak of the pompatus of love.
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