Last week while watching my son play, I starting thinking about how his sibling will be a lot younger and I just could not help myself remembering how you had to put 'sister' or 'brother' in front of an older sibling's name.
When we were younger, we were jejely calling ourselves by name o. We went to my mum's best friends house, while playing, I called my brother and she almost slapped me. I looked so confused, I didn't know what I did wrong, is it not my brother again? She looked at my mum and blutted out 'ehn ehn Remi so you want to spoil these children, how can this small Romoke be calling Gbola (my brother) by his first name (please wetin be his name again)'? Anyway my mum being the typical naija woman who wants to save face warned me to start calling my brother 'Brother Gbola". Haaaa, it was as if I was given a death sentence, my brother was just laughing, what's his business?
The next day I started practicing it, it sounded so weird on my lips, any time he annoyed me I would shout 'brother Gbola ko Brother Gbola ni' (someone please translate me I can't translate this one lol). Now it has become a part of me and a lot of times I call him by his nickname (maybe that my mum's friend will slap me when she hears and tell me to call him brother...nickname now looool)
What about a wife calling all her husband's siblings aunt something or brother something
Friends calling eachother's husbands uncle something (in fact a friend requested I start calling her husband Uncle cos he is not my mate lol)
My sister calls me by my first name and she still respects me, she calls my husband by his first name and there is plenty respect.
When some people hear that their husband's friend's wife is like 2 to 4 years younger than they are, they request to be called aunty something, mummy something etc
My sister called my friend's husband by her first name one time and she gave her serious attitude, we never got a memo that her husband had to be called Uncle something...
To me everything is just confusing, what I do is I address people the way everyone around me addresses the person just to avoid friction, but to me it has nothing to do with respect I feel it's more of an ego thing (my opinion).
Does putting uncle,aunt,brother,sister mean you are respecting the person?
Anyway my kids will call themselves whatever I name them and there will still be respect.
What do you think?
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