etiquette (was RE: Proposal for a new variant subtag of the french language (fr)

[Stephane Bortzmeyer]

On Sat, Dec 08, 2007 at 09:46:11AM -0800,
 Mark Crispin <mrc at CAC.Washington.EDU> wrote 
 a message of 45 lines which said:

> I consider surname-only acceptable only in the driest text,

You certainly know that its strongly depends on the country / culture
/ social class / tribe you're in and that it is certainly not
possible, in an international organization like the IETF, to edict
rules such as "do not use only the surname" and to hope that people
(who have other work to do) will learn them and respect them.

Not even mentioning the cultures where the whole concept of
firstname/surname is alien, I want to mention that the current usage
in France is even more baroque since it is accepted to refer to male
people by surname-only but not when the referred person is
female. (Pick any newspaper and read about the last presidential
campaign, « Sarkozy did so and so... » « Ségolène Royal said
that... ») Should french people on the list require the application of
this usage?