My favourite professor said that the only use for his 'Dr' was for getting a good seat table when making a reservation at a restaurant. It doesn't make your work or your opinions magically better, and there are plenty of clueless PhDs out there.

Besides, demanding any honourific is lame - proof of this is in the honorifics for politicians. :)

This discussion reminds me of an interesting story. In the South under Jim Crow, whites were very reluctant to call a black man "Mr.", which made things difficult when they had to discuss prominent people (like Booker T. Washington) who had to be addressed formally. The solution was to emphasize that person's title.

"To an unfamiliar Northerner one of very interesting and somewhat amusing phases of conditions down here is the panic fear displayed over the use of "Mr." or "Mrs." No Negro is ever called Mr. or Mrs. by a white man: that would indicate social equality. A Southern white man told me with humor of his difficulties:

"Now I admire Booker Washington. I regard him as a great man, and yet I couldn't call him Mr. Washington. We were all in a quandary until a doctor's degree was given him. That saved our lives! We all call him 'Dr.' Washington now."

Sure enough! I don't thing I have heard him called Mr. Washington since I came down here. It is always "Dr.' or just 'Booker.' They are ready to call a Negro 'Professor' or 'Bishop' or 'The Reverend' - but not 'Mr.'

https://books.google.com/books?id=QsLQAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA148&lpg=...

I remember reading that this is why the late James Brown insisted on being called Mr Brown.

Thank you for sharing this. That "Following the Color Line" story was remarkable! I had to read it all. I really need to acquaint myself more with journalism/material like this from this era.

As a German I find the honorifics in politics just weird.

We don't normally call Ms Merkel "Frau Bundeskanzlerin" and we don't normally call MPs "Herr Bundestagsabgeordneter" or "Frau Bundestagsabgeordnete" (although you might address them this way in a formal letter, maybe).

Maybe this has something to do with abolishing royal/aristocratic titles in the aftermath of WW1 -- it certainly feels anachronistic and oldfashioned to me.

A line from the show "The West Wing" went something like this:

"Please, Reverend, call me 'Mr. President'. It's not that I need you to stroke my ego, it's that in this job I have to make some difficult choices that can be uncomfortable to me personally, and I would like you to emphasize the office rather than the person holding it"

As a Scandinavian, all honorifics, including "Mr." etc. sound weird, but that was a great explanation for why some people would like one.

Mad Magazine had a gag way back in the day saying that one of the benefits of being a senator is being called "The Honorable [name]", right up until they jail you for all the horrible things you did in office...

I found it was useful for addressing my postdoc instructors formally when they didn't seem comfortable on a first-name basis.

*honorific (even in Commonwealth spelling)

http://www.collinsdictionary.com/spellcheck/english?q=honour...

> the only use for his 'Dr' was for getting a good seat table when making a reservation at a restaurant

Does that actually work? Will one get a better table?

Demanding to be called Doctor is lame.

But when I, as someone without a PhD, says it they will say I just don't understand.

Samuel Johnson was commonly referred to as Dr. Johnson after he got his honorary degree from Oxford. I have no idea whether he demanded to be called "Doctor" or not; I suspect the latter.