Holmes, Watson, and First Names

plaidadder:

So, if you have spent any time in the ACD canon fandom you will have encountered conversations about why Holmes and Watson always use each other’s surnames and never each other’s first names (or, as they would have put it, “Christian names”) when speaking to each other, even in private. And if you have spent a LOT of time in the ACD canon fandom, you may have encountered conversations about whether this would change if hypothetically speaking they Declared Their Love or Became A Couple.

So, in addition to what everyone else has to say on the subject, it occurred to me that it’s significant that during the first of the three trials involving Oscar Wilde and the Marquess of Queensberry–the one where Queensberry was the defendant–there’s a whole thing in Sir Edward Carson’s cross-examination of Wilde about Christian names. 

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