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FWIW, Sir is gender neutral in the military — this came up in Star Trek Voyager, anyway. Basically if your senior officer isn’t male, they’re sir until they tell you otherwise.
Sir is gender neutral in fictional militaries. Every woman holding a commission I ever encountered was ma'am. Didn't matter the country.
Sir hasn’t been gender neutral in my military for like 30 years at least
Having worked in the retail sector for some time, I quickly learned that appearances are often deceiving after a few embarrassing blunders on my part. I taught myself to call everyone 'my friend'. I had no more problems after that.
Also if you have to hand someone off to another colleague, I find you can just use "we", and it still feels polite. At least compared to calling them "the customer" (clumsy) or "they" (rude, when they're right next to you). 😃
"So, we're looking for [product], and we need it to be [thing]. Oh, and we have a budget of £25."
Yes, I've done this, as well. It definitely works.
Mage
I've seen enough posts related to etymology or historical use of words where they, either misrepresent the facts to fit a narrative or just make shit up, that I try to look it up my self. I also find etymology fascinating so that helps.
In this case they are absolutely right.
Both Mr and. Mrs,ms are derived from master and mistress (teachers) and both of those words stem from the Latin word Magister.
Edit: fun fact the English verb stick is the same word as the noun stick and comes from the same origin the Germanic word stik which also meant a piece of wood and to pierce/adhere or sharp. But wait it's older than that the Latin word stigare also means pierce. And share the same ancestry, namely indo-european. Turns out we humans have been talking about sticks for a long time.
...why not just "magister" and avoid a word that already has very strong, current connotations with fantasy?
I mean, mages are pretty cool. 🧙♂️
...crap, I'm cis male and I wanna be addressed as "mage"...
You can just do that ya know. Just be a wizard. Tell people to address you as such. Don't even have to be trans you can change your name and everything
Comrade
Some of my friends use "yes them" jokingly to replace yes sir/yes ma'am. Certainly not correct in any grammatical way, but it does flow well enough and is kindof funny as long as the person being addressed doesnt mind.
I was raised in southern hospitality, so I know exactly what you’re going through.
I just stopped using pronouns altogether.
“Excuse me” “Thank you” “I appreciate you” “Do you know the way to San Jose”
Turns out 99% of interactions don’t depend on what genitals a person’s rocking. I guess if you’re asked to identify a suspect in a crime it might help? Point being, stop focusing on their crotch and what they’re doing with it 😁 you’ve been trained to be weird about it.
I just stopped using pronouns altogether.
“Excuse me” “Thank you” “I appreciate you” “Do you know the way to San Jose”
ALL of these have pronouns. At least one of them has multiple pronouns! Haha
I use "friend" a lot.
This one bugs me a bit. I’m sure it’s said with good intentions, but I have a client who calls everyone on my team “friend” whether or not she knows us, and it always rubs me the wrong way. We’re not friends, she’s the client in a professional setting, and she has never shown any interest in getting to know me enough to actually call me “friend” and have it mean something, so it always comes across as superficial and unnaturally folksy.
As someone who doesn’t have a ton of deep friendships, the ones I do have matter a lot to me, which means I don’t like to throw around the word “friend” lightly.
Could just be my own emotional hangups though.
Yeah this is a perfect example of why it doesn't matter how polite you try to be. Someone is going to be bothered by ANY language at some point.
Cant go wrong with "Partner"
"Scuse me Partner, is this seat taken?" Still slaps if you say it confidently enough
Personally, I like "Sir" as in the Star Trek/Orville usage. It did happy things to my brain when the crew on the Orville referred to Commander Kelly Grayson (a cis woman) as "Sir", respectfully referring to her by her proper title as a commanding officer. That was cool. I like the gender neutral "Sir" a lot.
But for casual usage, "Friend" or "Neighbor" is nice. "Hey, neighbor, you dropped this." "Excuse me, friend, lemme reach around you here."
Ran into that problem with my enby friend. Specifically in the jokey context, like when a friend asks you to do something and you say “Yes Sir!” Or “Yes Ma’am!” in a kind of over the top way. They hadn’t really thought about it either and they were flummoxed too. We wound up with “Yes Colonel!”
Yes chef!
Your highness
Ok so reading the comments, from Appalachia, and I didn't see it about anyone specific.
So the reason why nothing seems correct is because nothing new will have the same level of cultural history. If you're trying to show social deference to people things like "friend" or "pal" won't work, and "chief" sounds too informal.
You can still use "sir" and "ma'am" under most circumstances, so the question is more about your circumstances.
Are you trying to find something that replaces those honorifics all together, or do you want a backup third option in case someone says they are non binary?
Are you still in the same culture, or have you moved to a culture that doesn't emphasize honorifics like you were raised with?
Chief is the only correct answer.
I often call people chief. One time I started to say Yessir, realized midway the person I was taking to might not appreciate the label, tried to change lanes and say Yeah, Chief, and wound up saying Yes Chef.
We had a really good conversation about The Bear TV series afterwards
I love this question and the discourse it's spawned!
personally I'll use "friend" if I'm at all acquainted with the other person or bend over backwards to not use one if I'm not. not too hard to leave it out if you try, and like anything becomes second nature pretty quick.
that being said I do use "chef" a lot, especially the phrase "heard, chef!" and I haven't worked in a kitchen in almost a decade lol
I use 'homie' sometimes. It's not always the right option but it's another arrow in the quiver.
I've written about this before, but "neighbor" or "cousin" or "my friend" usually work. If you can have a bit if fun with it, "Senator" is great. If plural, "folks".
My partner and I landed on "Captain" (or the truncated "Cap'n"). But that might be all the star trek we watch bleeding over (I never thought having "make it so, number 1" whispered in my ear would be so hot).
Lean into the southern-ness and call them Honey, Sugar, or Sweetie?
It gets easier to pull off the older I get.
I just call everyone "comrade".
just don't use any honorifics.
problem solved.
I work in 911 dispatch, understandably once in a while I get a caller who is just absolutely losing their mind over whatever is going on that they're calling about
And sometimes pretty much the only thing I can do to grab my callers attention and bring them back around to listening to me is to just kind of repeat sir/ma'am until I get their attention they come back around to realizing I'm trying to talk to them.
If I can get their name, I use that instead and it's more effective, but that's not always a given.
Just sitting there in silence until they get their shit together on their own doesn't work, and more likely they're going to just hang up on me.
And repeating whatever question I need answered really just kind of goes in one ear and out the other while they continue going off.
Their name or sir/ma'am is punchier, it has a way of cutting through their panic and grabbing their attention saying "you are being addressed right now and the person addressing you needs your attention"
And I really wish we had a good, gender-neutral equivalent of that. It needs to be polite and professional, and maybe a bit authoritative-sounding, so something like "dude" obviously won't cut it.
And I need it both for trans/non-binary people, and people whose gender just isn't clear on the phone because they're in a panic, calling from a potato, and/or just have a somewhat ambiguous voice.
Normally I just have to pick one and go with it, and they'll either correct me (in some cases, choosing the wrong one might actually be more effective at grabbing their attention because astonishingly (/s) people don't enjoy being misgendered and they jump at the opportunity to correct that) or they also just roll with it.
But I'd really like to avoid that if I can, and I haven't really found a good option for it yet.
Check their question again. It's pretty ingrained in some dialects
Just say Y'all, it pretty much covers that