Don’t you despise the so-called connected person who is forever referring to certain people by their first name and expecting you to know exactly who they are referring to, while implied that you are inferior if you DON’T know? Of course, they may be right? in a certain context. In others, they might be dead wrong.

In previous decades, knowing and using a person’s first name, or Christian name, was a sign of familiarity and possible intimacy. Some people would wear this knowledge like a badge of honor, or a crown, particularly in the age when men wore hats instead of ball caps and it was polite to refer to another person as Mr., Mrs., or Miss.

Let’s try a small test of this concept:

Can you give the last names of these three men if I only give you their first names?

Jeremy
John
Darren

Hm. Well, it really depends on the context, doesn’t it? What field am I referring to? What industry do they work in? What connection do they share? Note that these are fairly common names in the Western world. I could be referring to three people that I know personally than none of you have ever heard of before.

Let’s start with a couple of simple examples of recognizing people by their first names:

John, Paul, George, Ringo (please don’t make me explain this one!)
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (hint: New Testament of the Holy Bible)

Back to my previous example:

I could be referring to people working in the movie and television industry. In that example, the three people I could be talking about are:

Jeremy Piven
John Cusack
Darren Aronofsky

The connection here is male film producers who were born in the 1960s. A secondary connection is male entertainment industry people who starred as themselves in TV or movie productions. A third connection lies between John and Jeremy: they have starred in several movies together. They are apparently friends in real life that went to acting/theater school together and they were roommates for a time. However, as talented and as well known as these guys are, it’s hard to make the connection without some research and industry knowledge.

But those aren’t the guys that I was actually referring to.

Let’s make it a bit easier. I’ll give you the last names of the people that I was talking about:

Rowse
Schoemaker
Chow

Some of you have probably made the connection, especially if you’re well versed in the blogging world:

Jeremy Schoemaker
John Chow
Darren Rowse

However, outside of the blogging world, it’s quite possible that no one would connect these three names in the same way.

Context, my friend, context. Assume nothing, unless you really, really know better.

On the other hand, if you’re throwing around terms like Broadcasting Brain, Dykeman, or Mighty Introvert, at least I’ll know who you’re referring to.