AskTransgender

I really wish there was one that's already built consensus. I've asked about this on reddit, in meat space, here on lemmy, and other places with not even a front runner for a widely accepted option.

The closest I've seen is in socialist spaces, where comrade replaces all other honorifics.

There's great value in the formality of honorifics, and having a gender neutral option would go a long way to cracking one of the language barriers. It may seem like small potatoes, but not having a formal honorific is as big an issue as the struggle for the singular they/them. It really would help tip thinking towards non binary and gender neutral people as being respectable (by people that find it easy to dismiss them).

It's fine if individuals don't want honorifics at all for themselves, but there's a need for it for general use.

In Japanese stores or restaurants, they will call people "customer/guest." In regular conversation, they have the -san or -sama suffix, which is appropriate for any gender, or they'll leave out pronouns entirely (directing topics at someone is sometimes seen as rude).

Unfortunately, English doesn't really have gender neutral words or ways to talk about people in that way. We can use "they/them," but I'm not aware of any neutral words that are specifically used for "polite" conversations.

You could perhaps use the word "friend," but it might be overly familiar and probably wouldn't be appropriate for talking to a customer or client. You could say "honored guest" for customers or guests, but it's kind of an unusual way of speaking.

I just try to leave off the honorifics and be as kind as I can. If I need someone's attention, a nice "pardon me" can work nicely.

Mx (pronounced "mix") is the one I hear most common.

I'm also partial to Mage (or Mg.). It's a shortening of the Latin word "magister," which means "chief, head, director, teacher." Magister is the root word from which we get "mister" and "mistress"

my liege

While I don't think there is an obvious drop-in replacement yet, I'm sure some consensus will eventually happen (as has been forming for the use of "Mx./Mixes" for the Mr/Ms dichotomy).

Honestly though? I think honorifics are not a strictly necessary part of language. Like day-to-day I usually do...

1. For getting the attention of a person you don't know the name of, consider "excuse me" or "pardon" in formal/service contexts and "hey!" or "hello!" in more informal ones
2. For speaking to someone authoritatively (i.e. "Ma'am, you are now charged with..." or "Sir, you will have to leave the Wendy's") you can just omit the honorific entirely and replace it with some other polite particle (like "Sorry," or "I'm afraid that...")
3. For speaking to someone who has authority over you ("Sir, with all due respect...") you could address them by the title that confers that authority, or simply omit any honorifics and address them in a more peer-to-peer fashion.

Ultimately honorifics fill a more antiquated role of recognizing and placing yourself in a hierarchy, either below or above the other person, and maybe that's not a good thing. For example, using them often is a lot of the (perhaps unnecessary) emotional labour of service jobs. So if we're altering our language then perhaps just shifting away from them is the correct way forward. That's just my opinion though :)

I don't have any good answers, but I hope you enjoy these bad ones:

• citizen
• guvna'
• me ol' gaffer
• squire
• your eminence
• chief
• customer (cuz?)