“Call me Ishmael.”

That line opens one of literature’s great sweeping saga: a man, a whale, and the bruising, salt-earning adventure of simply not dying at sea. But the name does something subtle: like a polite knock on the front door of literature. It positions the narrator. In Sanskrit, nāma means exactly that: the thing by which you call someone from afar. The internet insists the English “name” is Germanic. Fine. I will let that slide this time. I’m not here to litigate etymology. But I am here to challenge something we pretend is apolitical.

⸻—————————————————————————––

The American First-Name Democracy

My career began in Calcutta, where using someone’s first name was fine as long as you added a soft _da at the end. It was the outsider’s cultural cheat code. You sounded casual, but the suffix still signaled respect, affection, and that you were talking to an elder brother figure; the kind you butter up before asking for his bike keys to impress someone wildly out of your league.

In the United States, calling someone by their first name is considered a gesture of equality or at least a very convincing performance of equality. And to be fair, in a corporate environment, where speed, informality, and horizontal communication genuinely help getting the work done, first-name culture is not just convenient, it is operationally essential. But what works for corporate efficiency does not automatically map onto the terrain of social orders.

It’s also wildly practical. No one is expected to flawlessly pronounce “Dhritiman Chatterjee” or, for that matter, “Durwasa Chakraborty” without commiting phonetic felony.

Many international students, especially from China, glide through campus with two names in effortless tandem: the Mandarin one, and the American one. Each one worn like a couture nom de plume, tailored perfectly for both the résumé and the room. (Alright, that’s my French quota for the year. Also, with those two words, my French vocabulary is now officially exhausted)

Fitzgerald, of course, wasn’t selling the American Dream to kids whose first names exceed the character limit on most government forms. USCIS paperwork would quietly agree, and even the Starbucks barista, with a marker hovering in defeat, would offer a solemn nod. But that rant belongs to another chapter entirely.

What troubles me is not the first-name basis itself, it has its place in corporate life, but the easy assumption that the same flattening principle must govern social relationships, intellectual lineages. Naming hierarchies don’t become oppressive simply because a workplace thrives without them.

⸻——————————————————————————-

The Flattening Where Structure Is Useful

The ethos of the first-name democracy has never fully resonated with me.

I find it difficult, almost socially inconsiderate, to address a doctor without the title Doctor, a professor without Professor, or a Wing Commander without the rank that defines their professional identity.

This instinct is not a vestige of servility. It is not a residue of feudal conditioning.

In a society as vast and structurally uneven as India, where the lower half of the socioeconomic pyramid alone exceeds the populations of many nations ; honorifics perform an essential social function. They acknowledge responsibility rather than superiority; they signal the weight of a role rather than the ego of the individual.

A champion of equality reading this might argue that first-name culture symbolically flattens hierarchy and seems like a good healthy start for a classless society. Yet hierarchy does not dissolve simply because we decline to articulate it. On the contrary, the refusal to name it risks obscuring the very burdens and accountabilities that institutions place on individuals.

And this is the distinction worth defending: First-name basis may be ideal for agile corporate structures, but social life :: education, mentorship, medicine, public services, requires more than speed; it requires signalling and respect.

In a country where the weight and impact of broader infrastructure of social labour remain chronically undervalued, the least we can do is recognize the office, not merely the occupant.

To call someone by the title is not just an act of reverence. It is an act of recognition.

⸻—————————————————————————––

Seven Words for ‘Teacher'

If anything, the British, however messed up their larger imperial legacy, were not entirely wrong in devising and institutionalizing such honorifics. They understood something about social architecture: that titles can function as stabilizers. They create clarity about roles, responsibilities, and the weight a person voluntarily agrees to carry.

But before you sprint off to dismiss me as a sucker for British imperial nostalgia, fanboying over etiquette imported alongside two centuries of plunder and paperwork, let’s remember something: the idea of honorifics is neither alien nor uniquely colonial. It has been part of our own cultural grammar long before the British or Europreans arrived.

Our own intellectual traditions once carried a beautifully layered vocabulary for those who shape us:

• Adhyapak — the instructor.
• Shikshak — the one who teaches with understanding.
• Upadhyay — the explainer, the interpreter.
• Acharya — the one who teaches by living the lesson.
• Pandit — the master of a discipline.
• Dhrishta — the visionary.
• Guru — the one who guides you from darkness to light.

As history tells it, Aristotle was Alexander’s teacher. But which teacher was he supposed to be?

The one who taught him philosophy?

The one who taught him to read?

The one who trained his reasoning with geometric shapes?

The one who explained the architecture of war?

The one who made him strategic enough to outmaneuver armies at Hydaspes (now known as Sindh)?

Or the one who made him shrewd enough to sense a mutiny before it happened and neutralize a coup within his own ranks?

All of these are radically different pedagogical acts yet history compresses them into a single, flattened noun: teacher.

Think of Naruto: Iruka and Kakashi are both sensei, yet they give Naruto entirely different things :: one gives him belonging; the other gives him direction. The title is the same, but the responsibility is different.

The Greeks had dozens of words for love, but not for teachers.

Ancient Greek is famous for its exquisitely nuanced vocabulary around love: agápē, érōs, philía, storgē, xenia, and so on. (Yes, I shamelessly copied the list from the morally dubious side of Pinterest.)

But for “teacher”? The language is surprisingly sparse.

The primary word was didaskalos, literally “the one who teaches.” There were related terms however, “didaskolos” remained a largely flat category.

Japanese follows a similar pattern. In Japanese, 先生 (sensei) literally means “one who was born before” :: a person with seniority, wisdom, or expertise.

The term is broad, respectful, but not differentiated. It doesn’t distinguish between the instructor, the vanguard of morality, the visionary, or the spiritual guide.

(Or maybe I’m completely wrong, and my so-called “expertise” is just the unholy fusion of too many Stephen Fry interviews on Greek mythologies and Japanese anime; none of which hardly qualifies as the gold standard for social and etymological essays.)

In other words:

Hierarchy isn’t inherently oppressive. Sometimes, it’s a way of paying attention to what exactly a person does for you.

Today, however, we flatten everything into a single word: Guru. Anyone with chalk dust on their shirt, yoga pants on a mat, or ochre robes on a dais gets the title automatically.

But the person who teaches you calculus is not the same as the person who asks you who you want to become. If you’re lucky, truly lucky, you may find both in the same person. I did. And among the many teachers who have guided me, one in particular is the reason I write this super lengthy blog. And I know most people don’t, which only deepens my gratitude for the rare few who manage to shape your mind and steady your compass at the same time.

Not every lecturer becomes a life-anchor.

Not every educator becomes a compass.

And they don’t have to.

But acknowledging layered roles helps position the student. It situates learning. It creates a quiet structure: I am here to be shaped, and you are here to take responsibility for that shaping.

⸻—————————————————————————––

Why I Still Use Honorifics

Not because I believe in hierarchy as domination.

But because I believe in hierarchy as orientation.

Some roles deserve acknowledgement :: not for the person, but for the labour they carry, the obligation they uphold, the weight their title silently bears.

In an age sprinting toward casual egalitarianism, perhaps dignity does not lie in flattening everything, but in calling people by the name that honours their responsibility.

Corporate life may run on a first-name basis. Society, however, runs on recognising who holds which burdens. One system optimises for speed; the other for meaning. They do not have to be in conflict, but they should not be confused.

And that is why I still use honorifics; why “Sir,” “Professor,” “Doctor,” “Brigadier” come naturally to me. Not out of deference, not out of fear, but out of recognition. Out of gratitude. Out of a belief that some kinds of work deserve to be named, because naming is the smallest, simplest way of saying: I see what you carry.

And before anyone panics: no, there is no Part B. I promise this franchise ends here._