THIRD PERSON, SINGULAR

Nobody sounds comfortable when they say their name aloud. You can have the most normal, innocuous name in the world - as soon as you say it out loud it becomes some alien tongue you don't have the anatomy to pronounce correctly. "The namezzz on our planet aren’t like yourzzz, hu-man."

Like dialling your phone number, saying your name aloud is, by and large, the domain of the people around you. Unless you are Doctor Doom, Mohammed Ali or schizophrenic, the chances are that you don't need to say your name aloud very often.

Because people have such trouble saying their own names aloud, when called upon to do so most people will either go formal, because the "first name, surname" combination is a complete, freestanding block of speech, or they'll offer the friendly shortening ("Ken") or nickname ("The Kenmeister"). But the ideal way around the problem is to get someone else to say your name aloud when it's time for the introductions. That way you've avoided the awkward name delivery problem, and the rest is profit.

I believe that this is where the formal introduction began. People were struggling so much introducing themselves they asked the butler or maitre d' to do the job for them. And when that got too expensive most people switched to phones with caller ID.