When I can safely stop using Jr. after my name

dear matthew-alice: what are the rules concerning the dropping of the title “junior” after a name? obviously, while the father is still alive, it makes sense, but what the hell do we do with someone like douglas fairbanks, jr.? his dad, senior, cashed in his chips over a thousand years ago. isn’t it time for him to just become plain doug? hardly a chance anyone would mistake him for his poppa, or john kennedy. his dad died in front of the whole world, why is he still junior? — laurence gross, san diego

for “rules” about when junior isn’t junior anymore, etiquette books and journalism style guides are as authoritative as any other source, if you’re just the average joe (junior), you can remove the clarifier anytime you like, traditionally, this is done when pops bites it. (actually, “junior” can designate the younger of any two living relatives with the same name, not just the son of a same-name father, montmorency, junior, could be named for his uncle montmorency, particularly if unk’s stinking rich.) one exception may be families who’ve carried a name through successive generations, until today there’s some squirming, puking infant named wardlow fennimore beanside IV. odds are, wardlow IV will still be wardlow IV when he’s consumptive and doddering, just because the beansides are so pompous.

but the bigly, screamingly famous are different from you and me and joe, junior, in the case of a fairbanks or a kennedy, over the years the “junior” has become a part of the name by which the son is known to us monkeys out here, so the “junior” is retained in the media and in other public declarations, less for the sake of clarity than for a sense of completeness, should tom brokaw one night intone, “john kennedy was mugged today in the small-appliances aisle of a delaware wal-mart,” logic dictates it’s john, junior, but there are plenty of us who’d first envision jack and mr. coffee with their hands in the air. especially since the famously dead just won’t go away these days, what with the lennon and morrison and elvis-at-burger-king sightings, you can’t take it with you, but nowadays you apparently can use it to buy a return ticket.