DEAR MISS MANNERS: Our town is a typical suburb of a large city. It was originally settled by German farmers, but over the years, it has become an affluent sprawl of subdivisions and strip malls.
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Many of the original family farms have been honored in street names. Lingering descendants of the families, or those who knew them, adhere to the original pronunciations, but the majority of the community no longer does. For example: Old-timers insist that Mueller Street should be pronounced “Miller,” not “Mew-ler.”
The thing is, I have lived in this town since the early 1970s and never heard anyone refer to that street as “Miller.” If someone gave me directions and said, “Turn on Miller Street,” I would have bypassed the “Mueller” sign and kept looking.
I feel that naming a street after a family is lovely, but that the family’s right to police pronunciation is limited. The whole point of naming streets at all is to make navigation easier. If the community at large has tacitly agreed to call a street “Mew-ler” because that is the more intuitive, contemporary interpretation of the spelling, then that becomes the correct way to say the street name.
Those who pronounce these streets “wrong” are being told, on social media, that they owe it to these families to adopt the “correct” pronunciation. This seems unnecessary to me — and I have a Dutch last name that no one can pronounce without guidance.
GENTLE READER: Snapping at people to do something that has not been done in decades is unlikely to be effective. Far better to use one of the few advantages Miss Manners sees to social media — which is that people can opt out of group conversations about such issues, rather than feeding the flames by continuing to argue about them.
DEAR MISS MANNERS: I’m a man who is 6-foot-6 and 62 years old. My entire life, I have found myself bent in half when greeting women for whom a welcome hug is appropriate.
My aunties, cousins, sisters and any number of others might throw their arms up, initiating a hug.
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When women (of any age) hug me, they always want to put their arms above my own — their arms are basically around my neck during the hug. Picture me bent in half hugging my 4-foot-11 mother-in-law.
I’m wondering, is this just hugging etiquette? Would I be in violation if I just kept my arms above theirs, allowing myself less of a stoop? Is it a rule or custom?
GENTLE READER: It is not a rule, and Miss Manners gives you leave to bend only as far as is consistent with your principles and your back.
Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.