Public Editor: Keeping up with the Trudeaus – names and titles

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Here's a little style and spelling test. Two of these recent references are correct and one is wrong. Can you guess which?

1. Hadrien Trudeau

2. Prime-minister-designate Justin Trudeau

3. The Trudeaus are Canada's "first family."

Answers:

1. Justin Trudeau's youngest child with wife Sophie Grégoire is Hadrien, with an "e," not an "a." On Saturday, Oct. 3, a photo caption used the incorrect "a" spelling, but the feature by Ian Brown on Mr. Trudeau properly used the "e."

So far, of the references to Hadrien in The Globe, it's been evenly split between right and wrong – and that's not good.

Now part of this started with Mr. Trudeau himself, who sent a Twitter announcement of his son's birth using the "a." Oops. It was corrected, but the error now seems hard to dislodge.

Last year, the Toronto Star's Susan Delacourt wrote about the clarification, saying that between the initial error and the clarification two weeks later, "hearty greetings were sent to baby 'Hadrian' by [then] Prime Minister Stephen Harper, New Democratic Party Leader Thomas Mulcair and by hundreds, if not thousands, of Canadians."

As she points out, Hadrien is the French spelling of Hadrian, the emperor of Rome who built the famous wall.

So with that in mind, let's remember it's Hadrien.

2. One other point came from a Toronto reader who objected to the term "prime-minister-designate."

"I can barely abide the drivel which is 'prime-minister-designate' – designated by whom since our next prime minister won't be confirmed until Parliament convenes and the confidence of the House is tested. ('Prime-minister-presumptive' is a more reasonable term.)"

Globe and Mail style is prime-minister-designate. From The Globe and Mail Style Book: "In Canada's parliamentary system, in which prime ministers and premiers are chosen by their parties rather than directly elected by the people, it is inaccurate to copy the style of countries that elect their leaders directly. Thus, an American presidential candidate who has been elected but has not yet taken over the job is properly a president-elect, but a prime minister or premier in Canada is a prime-minister-designate or premier-designate."

I have seen the term "elect" used in other media, which would also be accurate in a parliamentary democracy.

3. And then there was a letter from a reader objecting to the use of "first family."

"Will the Globe & Mail please stop using the American terms 'first family' and 'first lady' in its articles? This past week, these dreadful and annoying Americanisms have been used in two articles in The Globe & Mail. We are not the United States where these terms are perfectly acceptable. In our democracy, the Prime Minister is merely the head of government and NOT the head of state unlike in the United States where the president fills both roles," the reader said.

The Globe and Mail Style Book agrees: "first lady: lower-case, even before a name. A term not used in Canada."