DEAR MISS MANNERS: A friend whom I very much treasured has ceased to be my friend.

After 12 years of travel adventures, Saturday afternoons at markets, deep conversations over coffee, visiting each other several times a year (after she moved 1,000 miles away) and helping each other with projects, she started distancing herself from me.

I asked her what was happening, and she would only say there was nothing wrong and that nothing had changed. She acted like I was imagining things.

I received a card in the mail from her a few months ago where she mentioned, almost as an aside, that she had moved back here. I called her immediately and asked how I could have missed that she was moving back. She laughed and said she’d been here for six weeks already.

I felt crushed, though I didn’t express that. The friend I had known would have called me the day the decision was made. Actually, she would have called me before that, to talk over the pros and cons. We would have seen each other at least a dozen times in those six weeks.

Instead, we have only seen each other once in the four months she’s been back -- for 30 minutes, to watch a parade. I have reached out since then to invite her to coffee or lunch, and those messages have been returned with silence.

I honestly don’t know what happened. Should I simply acquiesce to this radio silence?

GENTLE READER: Yes, unless you want to have one more go at facing the problem directly: “Clearly we have grown distant, and I am at a loss as to why. You say that nothing is wrong, but you cannot deny that our friendship is not what it was. If I have done something wrong, please let me know so that I have a chance to correct it and make amends.”

If your erstwhile friend continues to demur, Miss Manners is afraid that you will have to accept the loss and move on. And then decide whether or not you want to avoid her at the grocery store.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Years ago, my father-in-law gave me a necklace, totally unexpectedly. It was one of many pieces of jewelry he had given to his wife, who had died years prior. He also gave some pieces to other members of the family.

The necklace is not something I enjoy wearing; it gets all tangled up and I have to get it fixed each time I wear it. Meanwhile, my sister-in-law is not happy with the diamond earrings she received, which she mentions occasionally.

Should I just give the necklace to her? The last time I had it assessed, they said it was worth about 39,000.

GENTLE READER: About 39,000 what?! Miss Manners hopes you mean rupees or pesos, or that you added too many zeros.

If the monetary value is truly inconsequential to you, by all means, give it to your sister-in-law. She would be forever in your debt.

(Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My daughter was recently part of a wedding party, acting as a flower girl for a relative of my ex-husband. My ex and I were still married when the bride asked for my permission for this, and I agreed.

Later, she asked me for a photo of my daughter to put on a wedding website. Concerned about privacy for my young daughter, I asked if the website was going to be public. She said it would be password-protected and only accessed by the wedding party, so I sent her a photo.

I also asked the bride to use my daughter's full, correct name (think "Mary Ann") anywhere it appeared; my ex-husband’s family and friends all began calling her (e.g.) "Mary" years ago, ignoring my requests to use her full name. The bride agreed.

About 10 months later, after I had left my marriage, my daughter served as the flower girl in the wedding. I was not part of the event, nor had I expected to be. Shortly after the wedding, I learned that the wedding website was indeed public and easily accessible. My daughter’s picture was public, along with her first and last name -- and the bride had used Mary instead of Mary Ann.

I asked my ex-husband about this, as he has made it clear that our daughter's privacy is important to him. He said he knew nothing about the website, though he had been sent a password to access it. He offered to ask the bride, after her honeymoon, to make the site private and correct our daughter's name. (For privacy, I don’t think the bride should have listed children’s last names at all.)

I know the couple has been back for at least a week, and yet nothing has changed on the website.

Should the bride have honored my requests, both for the privacy of the website and the use of my daughter’s full name? Or did my divorcing her relative relieve her of that responsibility?

GENTLE READER: The privacy request, yes, she should have. The name change, no: If the rest of the family is using the short version, it will feel quarrelsome to insist. And since one of your contentions is that you do not want your daughter's full name used anyway, it is an odd argument.

Miss Manners suggests, instead, that you write a kind note to the bride saying that the wedding looked beautiful and that Mary Ann had a wonderful time, but that if the bride could please double-check that the website is password-protected, you would be grateful.

The fact that you, who were not a guest, could easily find and access it should quell any contention that it was private.

(Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I’m a man who is 6-foot-6 and 62 years old. My entire life, I have found myself bent in half when greeting women for whom a welcome hug is appropriate. My aunties, cousins, sisters and any number of others might throw their arms up, initiating a hug.

When women (of any age) hug me, they always want to put their arms above my own -- their arms are basically around my neck during the hug. Picture me bent in half hugging my 4’11” mother-in-law.

I’m wondering, is this just hugging etiquette? Would I be in violation if I just kept my arms above theirs, allowing myself less of a stoop? Is it a rule or custom?

GENTLE READER: It is not a rule, and Miss Manners gives you leave to bend only as far as is consistent with your principles and your back.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Our town is a typical suburb of a large city. It was originally settled by German farmers, but over the years, it has become an affluent sprawl of subdivisions and strip malls. Many of the original family farms have been honored in various street names.

Lingering descendants of the families, or those who knew them, adhere to the original pronunciations, but the majority of the community no longer does. For example: Old-timers insist that Mueller Street should be pronounced "Miller," not "Mew-ler." This is just one of several examples.

The thing is, I have lived in this town since the early 1970s, and never heard anyone refer to that street as "Miller." If someone gave me directions and said, "Turn on Miller Street," I would have bypassed the "Mueller" sign and kept looking.

I feel that naming a street after a family is lovely, but that the family’s right to police pronunciation is limited. The whole point of naming streets at all is to make navigation easier. If the community at large has tacitly agreed to call a street "Mew-ler" because that is the more intuitive, contemporary interpretation of the spelling, then that becomes the correct way to say the street name.

Those who pronounce these streets "wrong" are being told, on social media, that they owe it to these families to adopt the "correct" pronunciation. This seems unnecessary to me -- and I have a Dutch last name that no one can pronounce without guidance.

GENTLE READER: Snapping at people to do something that has not been done in decades is unlikely to be effective. Far better to use one of the few advantages Miss Manners sees to social media -- which is that people can opt out of group conversations about such issues, rather than feeding the flames by continuing to argue about them.

(Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)