Miss Manners: Forgoing last names: more aggravating than friendly

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Please comment on the apparent new trend where people eliminate their last names on things like wedding invitations and baby announcements.

I’ve seen “save the date” cards with a picture of “Joshua and Emily” – no last names of either. I didn’t recognize them. (It turned out to be a cousin’s child and the fiance I’ve never met.) A wedding invitation reply card was addressed to “Jordan and Caitlin” – no last names. A baby announcement introduced “Isabella, daughter of proud parents Samantha and Luke.” I know these folks, but I can only remember her maiden name. I couldn’t send a card or a gift without doing a little investigating.

GENTLE READER: Last names? People still have last names? Miss Manners has seen little evidence of that.

How to make a proper introduction, weighing the shifting claims of gender, rank, age and relationship, was once a key etiquette problem. Should you introduce an archbishop to a dowager, or her to him? What if the archbishop is your uncle, and the dowager is a member of Congress?

You see what fun that could be – well, for etiquetteers, not for those who had to perform the introductions. Even Miss Manners is not sorry that things calmed down enough to let pass well-meant introductions without all that work.

Still, no one ever doubted that saying the full names was a non-negotiable element. While this was hard on people who have trouble remembering their friends’ names, we kindly provided various tricks, such as “You two must know each other,” leaving them to deny that and pronounce their own names.

Their own full names. That is how you learn who people are, so that you can know where to pursue the acquaintance, ask if they are related to someone you know with the same surname, and so on. Half an introduction is useless.

The strange thing is that your correspondents believe that they are being unpretentious and friendly. But it is arrogant to presume that you are so universally identifiable, even to people who know others with the same given names. They are only making work for those who, like you, are kind enough to pursue the matter.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: A host asked me not to do the dishes after asking me many times before. She was anal about her dishes. I believe I do a good job when I wash the dishes. I was offended. Was it rude for her to say that?

GENTLE READER: She doesn’t happen to be your daughter-in-law, does she? Just a wild guess, but Miss Manners is having trouble understanding why you would be so rude as to declare that your host’s word in her own house about her own dishes should count for nothing.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Our daughter wants to have a destination wedding in Ireland. The setting would be a group of buildings that will house 26 people. The reception will be held at the site. As her parents, what is our financial responsibility? She is 30 years old and has been working and not living at home for over 10 years.

GENTLE READER: It’s your money, and you get to decide – not your daughter, not Miss Manners, and not etiquette itself, which does not pass out bills.