r/XFiles • u/AgentImpressive8383 Just here for the š¢ • 13h ago
Discussion Never thought about this before
Why do LGM call each other by their last names? I get why Mulder and Scully do it but I have no idea why LGM do that.
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u/Wonderful-Weight9969 12h ago
Kind of a thing that people use to do. I remember almost exclusively using someone's last name growing up in the 90s.
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u/Drunkensailor1985 11h ago
Same here. Although I'm from the netherlands we mostly used surnames when they weren't too long.
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u/culturalproduct 13h ago
They aspire to seem professional.
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u/fpnewsandpromos 13h ago
It might have been more common 30 or so years ago, especially for men. Everyone called my husband by his last name, including me in the 90s. As time went on, it faded away.
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u/wiggles105 8h ago
Back in the day, this was common. There would be, like, 4 Johns and 3 Jessicas in every classroom, and youād just call people by their last name. Unless one of the Johns had a common last name like Smith. Then heād get to be called John or JS or something. For some reason, the girls didnāt always roll like that (although my friends and I did), so sometimes theyād be Jess B., Jess W., and Jess Williams.
My name was extremely common for my age group, and I have a funny last name, so people always just called me by my last name or nicknames based on it. When I got married, I kept my last name for many reasons, one of which was that everyone still called me by it interchangeably with my first name. Iāve been married 15 years, and my husband STILL mostly calls me by my last name.
That was all to say that, as a 90s kid, TLG doing this never bothered me. Iāve never even really noticed that it might be considered unusual.
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u/Individual99991 11h ago
It's just what friends sometimes do. Or used to do? Do Gen Z not do this any more? We definitely used to call people, especially guys, by their surnames when I was a kid.
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u/The_Amber_Cakes 13h ago
For the drama of it. š¤£
But really, could imagine calling someone like Langly āRichardā. š Richard, Richie, Rick, terrible awful, they donāt suit him at all. I donāt even care for the virtually never used āRingoā nickname for him. Langly is perfect, and I think everyone agrees.
Iād wager the real answer is those are more interesting names, it suits the styles of all three of them. And I can imagine head canons for the other two for not wanting to go by Melvin or John, professionally anyway.
Other characters do refer to them by their first names, Susanne, Byersā dad, Yves. Langlyās dad calls him Ringo once in a flashback, and an older woman familiar with the publication, who comes to them for help, uses both Ringo and Richard, otherwise no one has ever used his nickname or first name.
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u/vintageideals 12h ago
I feel like people used to this a lot more back then. I was born mid 80s and remember a lot of teenagers and adults calling each other by their surnames?
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u/EditDog_1969 13h ago
Why does everyone on TV do that? Military setting, maybe doctors, but Homeland and X-Files both have wives/lovers calling each other by their last names exclusively and I donāt get it.
My guess is from a writing perspective, itās easier for the audience to keep the characters separate when they have the more unique last names as identifiers. Twin Peaks famously played with various characters having the same first names, probably satirizing the convention.
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u/cortohdow 9h ago
Genuinely which Twin Peaks characters are you talking about? They mostly have completely different first names, with the exceptions being BOB and Bobby, Mike the one-armed man (who is mostly called that) and Bobby's friend Mike, who most often gets called Snake, and Jean & Jean-Michel Renault.
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u/EditDog_1969 9h ago
Thereās also multiple Phillips. One of whom is also one of the Mikes. Identity in Twin Peaks is some tricky shit.
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u/Fancy_Phase9803 13h ago
I have friends that we call them by their last name. In fact it feels weird when they are referred to by their first name. I guess I don't feel it as abnormal at all. My Grandpa was always called by his middle name. I didn't even know his real name until I was like in college.
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u/thekraken108 12h ago
Mulder and Scully doing it gets weird as the show progresses and they become closer to each other. I know Mulder hates his first name, but why doesn't he ever call Scully Dana?
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u/AgentImpressive8383 7h ago
Nah. It always sounds weird when they call each other by their first names.
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u/AmitBrian 7h ago
Itās just how he knows her. He doesnāt think of it as her last name he just thinks of it as her name.
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u/Creative_Energy533 11h ago
Plus it seemed like all the other women were allowed to call him Fox. š
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u/Few-Double6563 11h ago
I was watching an episode a few nights ago, and he called her Dana; it sounded very strange. Their first names seem to be used only by their parents. CSM (who is allegedly Mulder's father) even calls Mulder "Fox" on a few occassion.
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u/merla_blue 10h ago
I think he's trying to keep some professional distance but then their surnames become so familiar and affectionate anyway that first names sound weird.
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u/fitzthrawn 12h ago
Byers and Langley make sense, with first names that common, speaking from experience, guys will default to last names for clarity, even if you're the only one. Frohike probably just likes his last name more then Melvin
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u/maarzbaarz 11h ago
It can be more common than you think, when I worked at the post office management explicitly referred to carriers by our last names (which I found confusing when meeting people for the first time and they had a first name as a last name). Also in middle school and HS sports we used last names more than firsts.
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u/ForFansSake 11h ago
I know plenty of people who call their nest friends by their surnames. Not that weird.
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u/Iebejsbaga2728eindxb 11h ago
" I even make my parents call me Mulder, so, Mulder"
it's somewhere between a sign of professional respect and helping the person you're talking to stay in work mode I feel. it's also objectively cooler
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u/indysolo19 10h ago
I always thought this was a GenX male thing. No one called me by my last name in high school. But when my brother came in (I was in 12th when he was in 9th), I heard my last name being shouted in the hallway and would turn around and see some dude smiling at my brother. I was like... oh okay, not for me.
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u/chazwomaq 12h ago
Generational thing. Much more common in the 50s 60s 70s when these characters grew up. Pretty old fashioned by the 90s but still a thing among acquaintances more than friends.
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u/bell83 12h ago edited 12h ago
Some people just do this. My best friend and I (along with other friends of mine) have referred to each other by last name since we were in second grade almost 40 years ago. And a friend's father refused to be called by his first name, so much so that when he got uniforms made for his shop job, he gave them his last name, only. Even his wife called him by his last name.
For them, specifically, I can't speak to why they were written that way. But there are some who do it/prefer it.
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u/brigadier_tc 12h ago
Combination of wanting to look professional and people calling eachother their last names was more common years ago. Just leftovers of more formal society that hadn't fully faded by this point
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u/BearTheDevil 10h ago
It's of the time - I grew up in the early 2000s and I think we were the last to use surnames as nicknames but it was only on occasion.
It may also stem from the fact that none of them really liked each other when they first met so it was a way for them to emotionally distance themselves and then it just stuck.
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u/RiversSecondWife 5h ago
Itās common to have multiples of the same first name where Iām from, but last names are more varied.
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u/super-nintendumpster 4h ago
Me and almost all of my friends did this in high school. That only started though because like 4 of us all had the same first name.
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u/Cronogato 33m ago
I always assumed that were nicknames or chosen fake IDs, they were hackers after all
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u/Maleficent-Shower769 13h ago
Shows how much attention I pay, I just thought that was their given names but then other than Frohike I can never remember their name. It also took me around 5 seasons to realise they were called the lone gunmen
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u/Different_Skirt_234 13h ago
I think it's kind of a tossup as to whether Frohike or Langly started it. Both are pretty paranoid. Byers was a govt employee before becoming one of the Lone Gunmen, though.
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u/SlipstickLibbyLong 12h ago
Well with names Melvin and Dick, like Fox, they would want to use their last names. And John likely wanted to keep his name for use only when referring to Kennedy.
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u/Yardi_Life 11h ago
I feel like it used to be more of a thing. I think the first time I noticed it was when I read Harry Potter as a kid
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u/Untouchable2K 12h ago
Am i the only person who didn't care about those characters in the X-Files? They were boring. I didn't find them very interesting. That's just my opinion.
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u/Significant-Rush-129 13h ago
When I was growing up, most boys I knew called each other by their last names too. I always thought it was like a guy thing/sign of being ābrosā. At least it was back in the 1900s.