In the culture where I come from, Uncle and Aunty are often used as an honorific. If you have adults who are close friends of the family, they are honoured by calling them uncle and aunty. So it was a bit of a shock when I discovered that people here in Sydney think that calling people uncle or aunty is a term of derision. It seems that they think that people who do this are gangsters. Tony in this photo was always uncle Tony to us kids.