Let me draw some examples from Pride & Prejudice:
No one ever addresses Mr. Darcy by his given name, Fitzwilliam (his mother's maiden name). They talk ABOUT Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, but no one calls him by his name. I imagine Elizabeth will still address her husband as "Darcy" after they are married, much as Mrs Bennet addresses her husband as "Mr. Bennet."
Elizabeth addresses her aunt as "My dear aunt" or "Mrs Gardiner"; her aunt addresses her as "Elizabeth" or "Lizzy". Lady Catherine addresses Colonel Fitzwilliam imperiously as "Fitzwilliam," but I'm not sure if she is his aunt by blood or by marriage. On reflection, probably marriage.
I wish Darcy & Colonel Fitzwilliam had addressed each other by name in the course of conversation. Last names, first names, nicknames? It would help me know how my characters should address each other, because that's tripped me up for a while. I made some decisions- don't know if they're correct but I'll stick with them for now:
Highlight for a discussion of nomenclature that includes spoilers:
Hugh and Allan are the old Earl's sons. They're 15 years apart in age. (They have a married sister, Mary, and several deceased siblings; such was the 18th century- but I digress.) As the heir, Hugh had the courtesy title of Viscount. Anyone not in the immediate family would address him as Viscount Mahon. Mahon is a place; it's what he's Viscount OF. As children, Hugh and Allen may have addressed each other by their first names? I'm guessing? Or perhaps Allen is just full of sass. Because Hugh has just become Earl, he wants everyone to address him as befits his station, including his disreputable much younger brother. Hugh's eldest son Stephen, when he was the grandson of an Earl, was addressed as Mr. Stephen Stanhope. As the current Earl's heir, he is now given the courtesy title of Viscount and is addressed as Viscount Mahon.
How Stephen and Allen called each other (as children) is less obvious. They are 6 years apart in age. Was courtesy due to Allen for being the uncle, or to Stephen for having a higher social standing? Did Stephen address him as Allen, Uncle Allen, Uncle Stanhope, or Mr. Stanhope? Given that Stephen was also Mr. Stanhope, that seems odd. It is a fair bet that Allen called Stephen by his first name, since an Earl's grandson doesn't have a courtesy title, and say, a 12-year-old Mr. Stanhope calling a 6-year-old Mr. Stanhope just sounds odd.
So, say, cousins seem to address each other by surname. If you had a half-dozen brothers who all married and had a half-dozen sons each, would all 36 cousins address each other as Mr. Lastname, when their Lastnames are the same? Actually, given that there were only about a dozen first names in common use, a third of them would probably have the same first names. In that case, family would probably call them by a nickname.
This is all most confusing.
Stanhope is pronounced "Stannup," by the way.
When drawing examples from Pride & Prejudice, it is important to remember it was written about women, by a woman. The kinds of things men would only say or do in the company of other men do not appear in the book. Don't think I'm criticising it- I'm saying it is an incomplete view of life at that time. Read Bosworth's Journal for contrast. Bosworth was a decadent young man living in London, and most of his journal concerns prostitutes, STDs, and maneuvering to get a military rank without buying it with money.
On technical aspects: I've been having some difficulty since making this the main page. I save and upload in Dreamweaver, but it still shows the non-updated version. I figured out that I can log onto the server and delete the page, then upload from Dreamweaver, but I find that tedious. The archive page loads just fine, so I don't know what the trouble is.
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