Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-7302713-20130510215247/@comment-188432-20130512030240

Badwolff, you're accepting Anoted's initial hypothesis on face value. I don't particularly believe that Anoted is correct.

It is not true that we uniformly call all women by their first name and all men by their last. Rather, it's that it has become a tradition to speak of companions by their first name, and the overwhelming number of companions are female. It's also true and fair to say that many main characters — starting with the Doctor himself — were only referred to by a single name on television: Susan (though called "Foreman" once or twice, it was very clear that wasn't a true last name), Vicki, Polly, Leela (unless you want to count "of the Sevateem"), Romana I, Romana II, K9, Adric, Nyssa (unless you want to count "of Traken"), Kamelion, Turlough (okay, this eventually turned out to be a last name, but only the most intense of fans know his first name), and Mel.

The show absolutely encourages us to think of people by a single name. It's not wrong to therefore do so. And it's certainly not sexist. Again, it's simple math: more women in a show that stresses first names means that there will be more instances in articles of a woman being referenced by her first name.

Since this thread's initial assertion is logically flawed, there is no cause for new policy.