In India, it is common to place the honorific sir after a person's name. The same is true of the words uncle and aunt. However, when I asked a native English speaker about it, she said that it is correct to place honorifics before a person's name..
This seems to be an American and British style of honorific usage, but could the Asian style be correct as well? Are these examples passable in American or British usage, or not acceptable at all?
I asked Manmohan Sir about the economic crises in the country.
Last night, I went to Sunita Patel Aunt(y)'s house for a birthday party.
Best Answer
Neither of those are idiomatic English in any dialect.
Titles describing your relationship to a person always go ahead of the name and never after it:
Where no relationship or honorific title exists, you can use the title Mr. (any man), Mrs (any married woman) or Ms. (any woman) followed by that person's surname to construct their "formal name":
If the person has been granted an honorific title, such as Sir, Dr., Professor, Gen. or Fr., this replaces Mr., Ms. or Mrs. at the start of the name. If a person has more than one title, they are normally all used before the name instead of Mr, Mrs or Ms.
When a person has several titles, some of which are extremely prestigious, sometimes less prestigious ones are dropped - for example although President Wilson has a PhD, he is not normally called "President Dr. Wilson".
As a learner you should think of honorific titles as part of a person's name: you should never add or remove titles for any reason without the permission of the person in question.
Note that some people use honorific titles as part of their stage name - notably Dr. Dre and Professor Green, however these are not formal titles and cannot be used on official documentation.
Post-nominal titles also exist, but are generally less significant and are optional, and describe the person's degrees, official honors and membership of some societies.
Note that whilst the title Sir is reserved for people who have had that title officially bestowed by the head of state, the polite sir can also be used to emphasize respect and subservience:
Note that this is almost never used in American English outside of fixed idioms (such as "How may I help you sir?"), and is very rarely used in British English. In both cases, respect is usually conveyed by using someone's title and last name instead of their first name:
Sir is also used in formal letter writing as a fixed idiom to convey respect:
Or when talking to a superior ranking officer in the military: