Mr and Mrs ......

[opas]

Now you are resident in France are you known as Mr and Mrs on your postbox or M et Mme....

I ask purely out of nosiness and amusement as we have a new English couple in the village and on passing by noticed they had Mr and Mrs... on their box, it never occurred to me to put anything other than M et Mme. Your thoughts ?

 

[Richard-R]

Left it blank. :-) but have thought of putting 'The English Couple' on it.

[owen taylor]

just our surname...

but, another quick question: Ms

Is the "Ms" option an American / English thing that is culturally irrelevant in France or is there an equivalent?

[owen taylor]

who the hell is owen taylor????????

I seem to have a new alias...

Carole (aka 2heads)

[Spacebadger<P> <P><P>The Badger Has Spoken<P>]

Ditto re Spacebadger - a new name for me - Patf

[Tim Stephenson (Archant IS)]

All - if the system has logged you in as the wrong account, please log out and back in again.

Firstly, there hasn't been any sort of security breech etc.

What has happened is that during the upgrade work the user database from the "old" LivingFrance forum system has been merged with a larger userbase on our main forum system. As a result we've had to update all the Living France user account identifiers to fit the new system.

Consequently when the new system tries to automatically log in anyone with a cookie containing their Forum user ID from the old system, the ID doesn't match the new set of accounts and the wrong information comes up.

The user isn't fully logged into the system as the cookie's user ID doesn't match other security records. This is why some functionality works, and some doesn't.

Unfortunately the only way to resolve this is for the people affected to log out of the system (which clears the incorrect cookie), and then log back in - which resets the account details.

Thanks for your assistance,

Tim

[Boiling a frog]

[quote]Now you are resident in France are you known as Mr and Mrs on your postbox or M et Mme.... I ask purely out of nosiness and amusement as we have a new English couple in the village and on passing by ...[/quote]

Sad people

[Tresco]

Sad, SAD??

Hey Froggie,

Some of us may not choose to take the name of the person who we married. I very much doubt whether any men could be included in this 'we'.  You may find it 'sad',  but for me, it's one of the things I have had to accept to make life run smoothly (i.e, getting  mail adressed in MY OWN NAME).

Have you ever had this problem, mail, correctly adressed with YOUR OWN NAME on it, not getting to you???

[Tresco]

Patf, Please, I need to know, where did Space Badger come from? Did Lf just give it to you? I quite  like it.

[Iceni]

Opas - simple answer, they cannot speak French.

John

not

 

[Dick Smith]

Whenever I have had dealings with French or German people in the UK I have been careful to call them Madame, Frau etc. I was taught that it was polite. I have always assumed that the same applies to me when I am abroad. Why assume they 'can't speak French'? Or that they are sad? Perhaps they believe in good manners, too.

[Boiling a frog]

[quote]Sad, SAD?? Hey Froggie, Some of us may not choose to take the name of the person who we married. I very much doubt whether any men could be included in this 'we'. You may find it 'sad', but for m...[/quote]

You have got the wrong end of the stick If you care to read the original post again you will realise I was refering to the fact that the people had put Mr and Mrs rather than M and Mme which I found sad

[Piprob]

Look, can't we get on with bottoming the Space badger thing? Its an ugly development. What's happening here? If we have been infiltrated by creatures from a parallel universe, or the machinations of a clumsy LF Web designers have split the space-time continuum, we could be in deep trouble.

[Patf]

Tresco - Spacebadger just turned up - yes it's quite an imaginative name, but I've gone back to my old one now. On topic : has anyone changed their first name in the phone book, on the letter box etc? Mine could be french, (Patricia) but Eddie refuses to change to Edouard. Businesses wanting to sell to British people go through the phone book looking for english - sounding names. Pat.

[opas]

Iceni, you were half right, the Mr of the couple doesnt, after 18 months in France.  mrs O

[Tresco]

My apologies to M Boiling a Frog, I did indeed get the wrong end of the stick, then I poked myself in the eye with it

Better have a look around to see what other nonsense I got up to on the forum last night.

Tresco

[Maddie]

Odd, that.  When we first moved here the Mairie asked us for all our details and then said there would be an item in our "parish newsletter" (or the French equivalent of) announcing our arrival and welcoming us.  There is was, a couple of weeks later - "Welcome to Mr and Mrs" M  - plus a quaint bit of clipart of the British Isles (subtle eh?).  I have noticed in subsequent issues that newcomers have been welcomed as a mixture of Mr and Mrs, M et Mme or just first names and surnames!  I know from the local gossip (my neighbour) that we are the only "Brits" in the village so where do these others Mr and Mrs come from then?

 

[Val_2]

Ours just has seagull poo on it.Bills always find their way here so it must work.

[Dick Smith]

[quote]You have got the wrong end of the stick If you care to read the original post again you will realise I was refering to the fact that the people had put Mr and Mrs rather than M and Mme which I found s...[/quote]

No, you are missing the point of my reply. I think that they are entitled to the courtesy of being given their titles (Mr and Mrs) in their native tongue, and that isn't sad, it's good manners.

[Will]

Dick, I know BAF can be a bit touchy at times but I think the reply was to the quoted post rather than to your contribution just above BAF's.

We have always made do with just the surname - plus the association for which Judie is treasurer and CA insists on addressing by its initials rather than put the treasurer's name on the envelope - and the name of the magazine I edit as PR companies use the magazine name rather than mine. That's quite enough for the postman to deal with

'The Only Brits in the Village' - great idea for an amusing regular sketch in a comedy show. Mind you, I think here in our bit of Normandy the 'only gay in the village' is M le Facteur. Don't know if he really is, but he's the most camp Frenchman I've come across.

 

[Clarkkent]

And now for a variation on this fascinating theme...

Names and titles are not taken lightly in France. The following is from  Le Nouvel Observateur.

 

La loi autorisant désormais les parents a dormer au premier de leur enfant soit le nom du père, soit celui de la mere, soit les deux, dans l’ordre de leur choix entre en vigueur au 1 er janvier, rompant avec une tradition patronymique remontant au XIe siècle. Ne samedi 1er janvier, Jules, premier enfant de M. Dupont et Mile Durand, pourra s’appeler Jules Dupont, mais aussi Jules Durand, Jules Dupont--Durand (avec un double tiret), ou encore Jules Durand--Dupont. Les textes réglementaires ne parleront plus de “patronyme” (nom du père) mais de “nom de famille”.

 

Heavens!

Fancy having to put a double hyphen into your surname! I wonder how many software applications that will crash.

 

- Le double nom de famille reste une option, que les parents peuvent demander en remplissant une “declaration conjointe de choix de nom”. En cas de désaccord, c’est le nom du père qui prévaut.

 

- En l’absence de declaration conjointe, rien ne change: si les parents sont manes, i’enfant légitime prendra le nom du père. S’ils vivent en union libre, l’enfant naturel prendra le nom du père en cas de reconnaissance commune. Sinon, il portera le nom du parent qui le reconnaIt en premier.

 

- Les parents doivent choisir le nom de famille a la naissance de ieur premier enfant. Ses frères et soeurs porteront le même nom que iui, pour des questions dunité de la fratrie.

 

And, it seems, the new name only lasts for one generation. Subsequent children must choose which one they will keep. 

It all seems rather Prussian to me. That which is not forbidden is compulsory.

[Miki]

Well, we have the only gay lady postie in the village and she really is a real helpful gal !

Last year, she went around with her "Dymo" labeller machine and on all the letterboxes on her round simply stuck the surname on the box. When I asked her why she had spent so long doing that, she said that it was so the posties that do the round in her absence, could be sure of the right people getting the mail. Must be why we get our neighbours mail every now and again then !(800 metres away, as you can't count our other near neighbours as they are in a different dept, we live bang on the limit of 2 depts)

 

[Clarkkent]

HELP

I was going to move my previous post to an alternative location (second thoughts etc). But the EDIT facility has now disappeared.

[Tourangelle]

one of the things I like about France is that even though I have kept my own name, I still get to be Madame.  I think that is cool.  On the post box, we have both our first names and last names and good thing too, the other day I got a really late Christmas car with just our first names on it.  I'm glad I bought the calendar

Jane

[brian-limousin<P><IMG src="http:forums.livingfrance.comimagesline.gif"><BR>brian-limousin<P><P>When you are in a hole - stop digging<BR><A class=authorlink href="http:" target=_blank><A><BR><P>]

I'm thinking of just putting "The mad Englishman" on the postbox, as I'm fairly sure that will be more recognised than my actual name.