Herr, Doktor, Professor, Sir

Janet asks...

Or, was it Sir, Professor, Doktor, Herr... I forget.
No I don't.

This was a real question for a friend of mine visiting Germany a few years ago...

Round here in Central PA, the students are excessively courteous, and I frequently find myself wondering who this "Prof Sigurdsson" is and why they keep trying to get his attention. (That is when they're not being incredibly obnoxious and rude, but that is rare and was a different blog topic)

It is simple, see: I am Icelandic - my name is Steinn
Sigurðsson, is a patronym, I am the Son of Sigur&eth:ur, literally. There is no such person as Mr/Dr/Professor Sigurdsson.
If you really want to be formal then Steinn Sigurðsson works, although it really sounds stilted to me.
And, since Iceland is a Republic, I don't have to worry about "Sir" much.
True formal address would be Herra Steinn Sigurðsson or Doktor/Prófessor Steinn Sigurðsson, but then you either be a member of the Icelandic Broadcasting Service stuck with a Ye Olde Icelandic Style Sheet, or know how to pronounce each word, be sardonic and have gone to school with me.

Of course, students be ingenious in their own way, promptly fall back on the worst of all possible worlds and call me "Dr Steinn". Yuck.
But since only about 6 people within a ~ 200 miles radius actually knows how to pronounce "Steinn" (hint it is not German, or Scottish), it doesn't really much matter. It is all wrong.

Oh, if in doubt go with "Doctor LastName", always err on the side of caution. When in Central PA, do as the Central PAers do...

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Wouldn't Professor Sigurdsson be a correct way to refer to you, i.e., Professor and son of Sigurd?

Clueless

Actually, it's Herr Prof. Dr., in that order.

Dude.

G��an daginn!

How on earth does an Icelander end up in Central PA? Oh well, nice green hills, but sounds like it is a school like Penn State. Anyway, I am a professor in Germany, originally from America and know a smidgen of Icelandic.

At my first university every mode of address was extremely formal. Students were written to with the title cand. inform. after they passed their preliminary exams and Dipl.-Inform. when the passed the oral boards. Everyone was Dr. this or Prof. Dr. that when spoken to. If you were a professor, you addressed other colleagues as "Herr Kollege", the dean was "Spektabilit�t" and the president "Magnifizenz". Shudder. And with "Du" and "Sie" you had to remember if you were on first name basis with someone all the time.

My second university was the exact opposite - everyone called everyone by first names and "Du". The next two were somewhere inbetween.

Being a woman, the Prof. Dr. bit is a big help in Germany to let people know that I know what I am doing, so I use these two in writing. In teaching I use Dr. LastName and my FirstName with special students like ones doing projects with me.

Now to your predicament: I am assuming that in Iceland you would just be called Steinn and everyone knows you are the professor as well as who your great-grandfather was and which bits of his DNA are still around in yours. So that is probably out. Your options seem to be:

a) Learn to like Dr. Steinn
b) Make up something like "Steinn doktori"
c) Get married and assume her last name so you can be called Dr. Smith at last
d) Assume another name such as "St�rkarl" and go by Prof. St�rkarl
e) Help them with pronunciation by asking them to adress you as "Prof. S."

Okay, not real brilliant. But anyway!

By WiseWoman (not verified) on 26 Aug 2006 #permalink