Calling people Aunty who are not your aunty

[Snog]

Does this still happen or was it unique to the 1970s?
And did it happen in middle class families or only in working class families?
Did you have aunties who were not actually your aunty?

My kids call my very best friends Aunty.
Me & my Mum used to call my Nan's best friend Aunty.
It's nice

My kids call my best friend Aunty.

(From working class English/Irish background)

Yes lots of aunties and uncles in the 70s. My own children called a lot of my good friends aunty or uncle but now they are older its just god parents and actual aunts and uncles. Im not sure it was class or regional really as i lived in several regions and my family have two class backgrounds.

I was born mid 50s, we called godparents and friends of our parents' Aunty (name) and Uncle (name). It wasn't considered polite then for children to address adults by their first names, not in our circles, anyway. Our own friends' parents were Mrs X, Mr X. As we grew up we moved to using first names; for our actual aunts and uncles as well. My two nieces have always just called me by my name.

I do it to the older family Aunties (related or not) as a sign of tenderness and respect.
Don’t insist on it from nieces and nephews but use it with my children when mentioning my siblings.

I’d love to be able to use the honorary term “sister” for my close female friends, like in the No.1 Ladies’ Detective series.

Not in our family. The only people who call me Auntie are my husband's nephews and nieces which I find a bit odd as they are all adults or in their late teens. My actual nephews and nieces have never called me anything other than my name.
My children call my brother Uncle X but that's only to differentiate him from all the other Xs amongst our family and friends. Everyone else just gets called by their name.
I used Auntie and Uncle to my relatives when I was a child but certainly by the time I was out of my teens I'd stopped. And I have never called any non relatives Auntie/Uncle. Things were more formal when I was a child and my friends' parents were Mr & Mrs Whatever, whereas our children's friends have always called us by our first names. I suppose that's why I find it a bit weird that my SIL's children don't!

Yes ds calls close friends auntie and uncle they like it and he does

I mixed Asian have been called Aunty since I was about 25 to younger family/friends of family/younger neighbours. I call all older family and friends aunty/uncle. I am not even sure who actually is and who isn’t in my extended family

In the 80s we called lots of family friends ‘Auntie and Uncle’ you never called anyone just by thier first names, if they weren’t family friends then you called them Mr or Mrs X
I think times have changed, it’s more normal to just call adults by thier first name, he likes of authority have become blurred.
Saying that our kids call one of our best friends ‘uncle’, not really sure how it started but he’s always been that to them.

And working class background (English side) I have heard it’s common

I (in my 50s) have - or had, sadly not so many still alive - plenty of people I would call Aunty and Uncle who weren't blood relatives. When I was growing up, people who you were close to were Aunty / Uncle, and people you didn't know so well were Mr or Mrs Surname.

My dc (late teen and early 20s) have people close to us who they call Aunty / Uncle - but far fewer that we did. Most people that are the equivalent of people we would have called Mr / Mrs Surname, they call by their first name, and were invited to as children too. But they still have a handful of non-related Aunties and Uncles.
I have a few young adults that call me Aunty too.

I was always expected to refer to close female elder friends as 'Auntie' as a child, but we don't do that with our children - keep it simple! Auntie just for the sisters of parents.

I still call my godmother Aunty, I'm in my 40s she says she really likes it. I used to refer to some female friends as Aunty when talking to DS about them (eg I saw Aunty Becky today) but I'm not sure when that stopped.

I really don’t like it, I had a myriad of so called aunts and uncles who were no relation to me whatsoever, my mum basically insisted I addressed every adult this way which I think was inherently wrong. From my grown up perspective it was forcing a familiarity and relationship on to a child which I remember not being comfortable with at all, particularly with certain adults who I did not like or feel at ease with. My friend insisted that her children call me aunty as she thought it was polite, told her my views and that I really didn’t like being called aunty when I wasn’t, it fell on deaf ears, every time her now grown up children call me aunty Zara I tell them please just call me Zara but they can’t seem to stop, I hate it.

In my culture, Chinese it’s respectful to call people Uncle and Auntie even if not related.

I never called non relatives auntie, though I did call my mum’s auntie auntie just like she did.

I do get called auntie by friends’ children though which I quite like to be honest!

Yep, I still call them aunty and uncle now. We’ve known them since I was 8, that’s 25 years. They took me and my brother under thier wing straight away and included us in everything. We’ve been on holiday with them, they used to take us places in the summer holidays. Now my kids call them the same. They actually brought me and DS back from the hospital after he was born as no one drove back then.

When we were younger there was this elderly lady on our estate who we all used to help, she was known by all of the kids in the flats as auntie. It’s just how it was, no one questioned it.

Really common in the region I grew up in still, though we never did.

This is normal for my DP's family, not for mine; I grew up with people who called everyone 'auntie' too. I quite like it.

As a child I was told it was because it was extremely rude to call anyone other than family by their Christian name if you were a child.
So a dear friend of the family would be Mrs Such & Such. A polite way around this is to adopt the title 'aunty' then it's allowed as they are informal family.

I had two aunts that were not relatives. I still refer to them as aunts 50 years later! They are my mothers closest friends. All others were strictly called by their title then last name.

I think everyone called Auntie was actually some sort of relative. Auntie B was actually my Granny's aunt. I still haven't actually picked out how Auntie R was related to me. Essentially every identifiable relative who wasn't a direct parental relationship was an uncle or auntie.

I am middle class and Indian. I have middle class friends, lot of them white , few british and some EU. My children are taught to call my friends especially females Aunty, my male friends variably as Uncle X or my DH with youger friends/ colleagues from work by first name. I know my kids prefer a Uncle/ aunty version for my older friends. It gives a structure and framework to their relationship with older adults , including some of their close friends mums who are my friends. They just don’t have a form of address to other friends’ s mum and find it confusing and shy away from taking to / about them . Dads of said friends are just in background / nameless🙂
I think for younger children / pre teen it is a useful term of reference and perspective. In my family it comes naturally and my friends universally like it. Some of their children do call me by name , and that is fine too.

Where I live (Austalia) the terms Auntie and Uncle are used by the First Nations people as terms to show reverence for a person, ie the elders of the family are Auntie / Uncle to everyone. I think it's lovely.

I Live in west London. Confusingly my children call elderly neighbour next door (in 80 s)Aunty X , which she is happy with but older single male (late 60s) friend/ neighbour who used to also help with school run from year 1 over last 7-8 yrs by first name , which he prefers.
It is very confusing but I think very nuanced . Not all older friends of parents are Aunty / Uncles. It is to do with mutual understanding and perception if the relationship.