referring to unknown/absent friends by their name

[gusl]

Here's a linguistic/pragmatic phenomenon: how often one refers to unknown & absent friends by their name. e.g. "One time, my friend Julia ... " vs "One time, my friend from school ...".

Is this related to formality? East Coast vs West Coast?

I usually only refer to someone's name when I expect that it will be recognized. If necessary, I'll introduce them first, before name-dropping. Maybe it's a habit from programming.

Comments

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Sure, if it's a complicated story then labels could be needed. But my default case is to leave them off, cause why would people care what my friend in grade school's name was?