Social etiquette governs the use of first names: intimate relationships earn informality; professional relationships maintain titles and surnames as markers of respect. The statement that someone is 'on a first name basis with no one' suggests a social isolation so complete that even intimacy has been denied. Yet nobody qualifies the meaning: Is it that nobody calls him by his first name? Or that he permits nobody to adopt the informality that first-name usage implies? The ambiguity creates a boundary. The boundary becomes a feature.