I have just realised that parents of small children often refer to themselves in the 3rd person, don’t they?
“Now come on darling [or “you little horror”], Mummy wants you to eat your breakfast nicely…” or whatever.
Sounds odd, from a distance, as it were, but I suspect we’ve all done it in that sort of situation. Must be something that “kicks in”. (Perhaps not in Cymraeg, though).
Excuse me while I go into the corner and fall down laughing.
As you observe, some divinities are tetchier than others, and I know for a fact that Sara Kali would demand chi lest she send some of her thugees after you in retribution for your boorish behavior. Or maybe that’s just for men, as she’s the patron of women in her (slightly) lighter aspects and would be much more chatty and informal. Yep, I think I can get away with ti…
Sheesh, now I’ll never get this topic out of my head…
My son (about six at the time) said of a family friend ‘Why does she always talk like she’s being someone else?’ He meant this third person thing, that I clearly never got the hang of.
She still does it to them all now, and all three do a double take when she does it.
In the otherwise-informal U.S., that’s definitely the way to let children of any age (including adult ones) know they’re about to get a dead serious lecture; and if you throw not only the middle name, but also the family name into the mix, s/he’ll know there’s BIG trouble coming.
There are some jokes about that in some early Asterix comics, along the lines of:
Roman: He’s really great.
Caesar, suspiciously: Who is?
Roman: You are, O Caesar.
Caesar: Oh, him!