first name, Miss

   The younger daughters of a middle or upper-class family are traditionally addressed in this way, ‘Miss’ + last name being the style used for the eldest daughter. But in general terms, ‘Miss’ + first name is used as a more respectful form of address than the first name on its own. It was far more common at a time when first names were not bandied about as they are today. Festus Derriman and other young swains in Thomas Hardy’s The Trumpet Major all address Anne Garland as ‘Miss Anne’, whereas today she would have been ‘Anne’ to them from childhood. In Vanity Fair, by William Thackeray, Joseph Sedley addresses Becky Sharp as ‘Miss Sharp’ at dinner, though by the end of the meal he is using ‘Miss Rebecca’. In Theirs was the Kingdom, by R.F.Delderfield, a young man uses ‘Miss’ + first name to a young woman who is slightly younger than himself, because he respects the social position of her family. She asks him to drop the ‘Miss’, and eventually they marry. In Kate and Emma, by Monica Dickens, a working-class man insists on using ‘Miss’ + first name to a woman who is obviously of middle-class background. I’ll Get By, by Elizabeth Byrd, has the comment: ‘Mother thinks it terrible that he doesn’t call me “Miss Julie” because he’s a Negro.’ The man concerned uses the first name.