How to Address People by Title

Use the title and surname a person holds (Judge Alvarez, Senator Reyes, Ambassador Lin, Dr. Okafor) until they invite you to use their first name, and then switch at once. “The Honorable” belongs on the envelope of a letter to a judge, an elected official, a cabinet officer or a United States ambassador, and never in speech or in the salutation. When you cannot tell what someone prefers, copy the way they sign their own email.

Alexandra Roberts on executive presence and social protocol

People who get titles wrong usually know the rule. They have decided, somewhere around the second glass of wine, that it does not apply in San Francisco, where the chief executive wears a fleece vest and everyone is on first names before the coat check. That is true of founders. It is much less true of the federal judge seated across from you at a museum dinner, or of the seventy-year-old principal who has had a family office on Sand Hill Road since before your company existed. The Bay Area has more unwritten protocol than it admits to, and forms of address are where it shows first.

They notice. Few of them will ever say so.

Title and surname, until you are invited

Hotels run on this rule, and I have never found a better one. At The Lowell a guest was Mr. or Ms. Surname until the guest said otherwise, and some guests never said otherwise, which was their right. The same holds in business. The more senior person sets the pace of familiarity, and the junior person follows it. A title costs you nothing if it turns out to be unnecessary. Using a first name too early costs you a small amount of standing that you will not get back that evening, because the other person now has to decide whether to correct you or let it go, and either way they are thinking about your manners instead of about what you were saying.

Then, when they say “please, call me Maria,” do it. Immediately, in your next sentence. People who keep saying “Judge” out of nervousness after the invitation has been made are, in effect, declining it.

The Honorable is written, never spoken

This is the single most common error I see in invitations and letters from otherwise careful executives. “The Honorable” is a courtesy used by other people, in writing, on the envelope and in the address block. It is not a title you say aloud. Nobody is introduced as “Honorable Reyes.” The salutation of the letter drops it entirely and uses the office: Dear Senator Reyes, or Dear Judge Alvarez. And a person never applies it to themselves, so a judge’s own business card and her own signature line should not carry it. If yours do, change them.

A table for the people you are most likely to meet

Sir Jony

Jony Ive has lived in San Francisco for most of his working life, and anyone who calls him Sir Ive has told the room they learned the title from a headline.

Former officials

Strict protocol says a title belongs to the office, so there is one governor of California at a time and the people who held the job before her are Mr. and Ms. again. American practice is kinder. Former senators, governors, cabinet secretaries and ambassadors are routinely addressed by their old title for the rest of their lives, and most of them expect it. Use it. If they would rather you did not, they will tell you, and the correction will cost you far less than the opposite mistake would have.

Doctors, and the PhD question

Physicians are Dr. in every setting. With a PhD it depends on the person and very much on the country. In Silicon Valley a great many founders and engineers hold doctorates and almost none of them use the title outside a lab or a lecture hall; calling the head of a robotics company “Dr. Patel” at a Woodside fundraiser will make you sound like you are reading from a conference program. In Germany the opposite is true. The doctorate can be entered on a German identity card, it is used at work as a matter of course, and dropping it from “Frau Dr. Weber” in a first email reads as a small demotion. Look at the signature. Whatever they put in front of their own name is what they want.

In email, copy the signature

Open with the title the first time. After that, mirror the way they sign. If a reply from the general counsel comes back signed “Sarah,” you write “Sarah” from then on, and switching back to “Ms. Feld” in your next message will read as cold, or as though you did not notice. If they keep signing with their full name and title, stay formal, however friendly the rest of their message sounds. The same logic applies when you are the one making the introduction, which I cover in the etiquette of the intro email, and in person in how to introduce two people, where the rule is to give both parties the same form of address.

When you genuinely do not know

Ask somebody before the event, ideally the host or the principal’s chief of staff, who will be glad you did. If you are already in the room and no one is available, ask the person directly, once, plainly: “How would you like me to address you?” Almost everyone takes the question as a courtesy. What people do not forgive is a guess delivered with confidence, and if what you have actually lost is the name itself, the recovery is in what to do when you forget someone’s name.

Where each default fits (and where it does not)

Most people walk into a room with one habit and apply it to everyone. Each habit has a place.

• First names from the start. Right among founders and peers at a SoMa office or a Y Combinator demo day. Wrong with a sitting judge, or with an older principal meeting you for the first time, who may never say anything but will remember it.
• Title and surname. The safe opening with anyone who holds an office or is clearly senior to you. It goes wrong when you keep it up after the person has introduced themselves as “Dev,” at which point it starts to read as distance.
• Sir and ma’am on their own. Natural with military officers and in much of the South. In a San Francisco boardroom “ma’am” tends to age a woman by about fifteen years, and I would leave it out.
• Asking outright. Best when you truly cannot tell. Worst when the person’s title is printed on the place card in front of them.

One concession. This page covers what an executive is likely to meet at a dinner or a board meeting in the Bay Area. It does not cover royalty, the peerage, clergy of every denomination or a formal state visit, and for those the published guides are more complete than anything I would write here: the Office of the Chief of Protocol at the State Department, and Robert Hickey’s Honor & Respect, a reference many American protocol officers keep within reach. More of the everyday side is collected in Field Notes.

Frequently asked questions

Clients rarely come to me about titles. They come about a board they are joining, or a dinner where the guest list changed in the last week to include a former secretary of state, and a surprising share of what we fix turns out to be the first ten words they planned to say to someone.