Srila Prabhupada is nice, that is the best.

Govinda dasi: All along everyone knew him as Swamiji. This is up until May of 1968. So Goursundar decided he wanted to call me Govindaji, and so he asked Prabhupada and Prabhupada said, "No, actually ji' is a third-class form of address. It's better not to call her Govindaji." So I piped up, I was sitting right in front of him and I said, "Well, if it's a third-class form of address, why are we calling you ji'? Why are we calling you Swamiji?" And he said, "It's not very important." I said, "Oh, no, it's very important. If it's a third-class form of address, then we don't want to call you that. We want to call you the most first-class form of address. So tell us what would be a good name for us to call you by." And he was very humble, very reluctant, but I pressed him, "We've got to change this," and he said, "You can call me Gurudev or Guru Maharaj or Prabhupada."

So I said, "Well, that's three. We need one." So I said, "Well, which one is the best?" and he answered, "Srila Prabhupada is nice, that is the best." So I said, "From today you will be called Srila Prabhupada." So I told all the devotees. Some of the devotees didn't like it because it kind of is a tongue twister, "Prabhupada," and "Swamiji" kind of flows more easily. But we gradually started calling him Srila Prabhupada from that time.