Discover Top Posts Tagged with #the sirs

Whenever I see this come across my dash:

It makes me think of this:

And suddenly the world feels a little less shitty

#sense8 #ian mckellen #Patrick Stewart #the sirs #wolfgang bogdanow #Felix berner #the herrs? sure let’s go with that #i love them your honor

One weird thing you see in the Jane Austen fandom is the persistent use of "Sir Lastname" when referring to knights/baronets instead of "Sir Firstname", despite of course that "Sir Lastname" never appears in a single book. Eg: Sir William Lucas will be referred to as "Sir Lucas" instead of "Sir William", which is how he's always referred to in the novel Pride and Prejudice.

However, psychology and logic say: if many people make the exact same mistake there must be a reason.

I think I've finally figured this one out. In English, our usual way of referring to someone with respect is "Mr. Lastname" (going to stay male here since knights are always male in Austen's works). So a person who has only read the book once/watched an adaptation once would be likely to remember "his name is William Lucas and he's a sir" and then match the Sir with Lastname because that's the more normal way of referring to someone respectfully.

That's what makes sense to me at least.

#jane austen #pride and prejudice #the sirs #language #errors