The Things We Say

By Beth Yarbrough

If you have just arrived here from somewhere else, trying to get your bearings, eager to fit in and understand, please don’t be discouraged at the confusing Southern custom of addressing older married women as “Miss”, female relatives of all ages as “Sis”, and male siblings from age six to ninety-six as “Brother”.

I have no answers for you. My spinster aunt, whose lovely given name was Katherine Elizabeth, was forever referred to in our family as Aunt Sis. She was hardly alone. If you are from around here, you know.

As they age, we add the designation “Miss” to the beginning of their names as a show of respect, as in my previous post about Miss Eunice and her technicolor dress. The famous Baldwin sisters of Walton’s Mountain, Miss Mamie and Miss Emily, also come to mind.

The term “Brother”, I think, comes from the fact that we often load our male children up with too many names, and then repeat the mistake down through two or three generations, so that we not only have a Charles Pierce Morehead, Senior, but also a Junior, a Third and even a Fourth. To remedy the problem, we lapse into Chip, Trip, Trey, Bo, and Bubba - or Brother.

I should probably mention the detour we take when we name the baby girls, too, but only to keep you from being confused when the cute young mom next to you in yoga class is named Bailey or Crandall or Mary-Murphy or Tindall or Lawson. Tradition holds that a girl’s first name is often her mother’s maiden name, so be advised that your yoga buddy’s name is Lawson for good reason.

All of this somehow makes perfect sense unless, as I said before, you are newly arrived. In that case, the best advice I can offer is patience. Just wait it out. One morning you will find yourself on the phone with a BFF from the past, and you will hear yourself saying “Sweetie, I have to run now. Today is Miss Alice’s birthday and I promised her a cake. I don’t know where in the world I’m going to find 90 candles.”