now applied only to the descendants of the Prophet. The most characteristic and familiar of English titles, again, that of “lord,” carries us back to a very primitive state, when the lord was par excellence the “loaf-warden” (hlaf-ord, hlaf-weard). Here it may be noted that the title “lord” has no foreign European equivalent: the German Herr (though Herrenhaus is strictly House of Lords), the Italian signor, the Spanish señor, the Slavonic pan and the Greek κύριος are all equivocal, being used most commonly in the sense of Mr (Master). Even the French do not translate “lord” by monseigneur (though seigneur is strictly speaking its equivalent), and still less by monsieur, though the ancient custom has survived of using the latter colloquially in place of all titles,[1] but by milord. Lastly there are two important European titles derived from personal relations with the sovereign, though they have long ceased to have any such connotation. Of these the oldest is that of “count,” which goes back to the comites (companions) of the early Roman emperors (see Count); the second is “baron,” originally meaning no more than “man” and so, under the feudal system, the king's “men” par excellence, the great tenants-in-chief of the crown (see Baron). In England the barons formed and form the body of the peerage, “peer” not being a title of honour, but the description of a status and function bestowed by their creation upon all barons, viscounts, earls, marquesses and dukes (see Peerage). In France, on the other hand, “peer” (pair) was under the old monarchy a title of honour; for not even all dukes were peers of France, and the style of such as were, therefore, ran duc et pair.
From the above it will already have become apparent that titles of honour, as they now survive in Europe, are picturesque relics of the feudal system (see Feudalism). In theory they are still territorial, and it is the shadowy suggestion of landed estate that gives, in France and Germany, to the nobiliary particles de and von their mystic virtue.[2] In Great Britain there has been of late years a tendency in the case of some newly made peers to drop the affectation of territorial power. In the case of some titles, e.g. Earl Carrington—this merely follows a very ancient English tradition; even under the feudal system after the Norman Conquest it was not unusual for the great nobles to use their titles with their family names or those of their fiefs indifferently; for instance, the Norman earls of Derby described themselves, as often as not, as Earls Ferrers (see Derby, Earls of). Convention, however, dictates that barons and viscounts should, on creation, adopt a territorial style. In the case of such titles as Lord James of Hereford and Lord Morley of Blackburn, this style is adopted from the place of birth; for which a certain precedent might perhaps be pleaded in the medieval custom exemplified in such names for royal princes as “John of Gaunt” or “Henry of Woodstock.” On the other hand, there has been also a somewhat absurd tendency to exaggerate the territorial styles by piling one on the top of the other. It would be invidious to mention actual instances; but the process may be illustrated by the imaginary title of Baron Coneyhurst of Ockley.
From the fact that, as feudalism developed, fiefs became hereditary, it comes that most European titles of honour are hereditary. Knighthood alone formed, in general, an exception to this rule. Yet, in their origin, no one of the titles familiar to us were descendible from father to son, and the only hereditary quality was that of abstract nobility. Yet, by a curious inversion of the whole idea of titles of honour, an inherited title has come to be far more valued than one bestowed;[3] it has the peculiarly aristocratic virtue ascribed by Lord Palmerston to the most Noble Order of the Garter: “There is no damned merit about it;” it has the crowning quality that it must needs be the monopoly of the few. Hereditary titles sink in value, indeed, just, in proportion as they become common. In the United Kingdom their value has been kept up by the rule of primogeniture: there can be only one bearer of such a title in a single generation. In France custom distributes the various titles of a family among all the sons, the eldest son, for instance, of a. duke inheriting his dukedom, the second son his marquisate, the third his count ship, and so on. In Germany and Austria titles pass to all the sons in each successive generation, though in Prussia the rule of primogeniture has been introduced in the case of certain new creations (e.g. Fürst, prince). The result is that equivalent titles vary enormously in social significance in different countries. An attempt has been made to estimate the extent of this variation in the case of individual titles in articles devoted to them. Here we need only illustrate the argument by one striking example. The Russian title of “prince” (knyaz) implies undoubted descent from the great reigning houses of Russia, Poland and Lithuania; but the title descends to all male children, none of whom is entitled to represent it par excellence. There may be three or four hundred princes bearing the same distinguished name; of these some may be great nobles, but others are not seldom found in quite humble capacities—waiters or droshky-drivers. The title in itself has little social value.
In the countries east of the marches of the old Empire, i.e. Hungary and the Slav lands, existing titles are partly developed from the native tradition (feudal in Hungary, Bohemia and Poland; autocratic and Oriental in Russia and the lands of the Balkan peninsula), partly borrowed from the West, like that of gróf (count) in Hungary and graf in Russia. Just as in autocratic Russia the sole indigenous title of honour (knyaz) is associated with royal descent,[4] so in the Mahommedan East there are, outside the reigning families, no hereditary titles, except that of sherīf, already mentioned. In India the hereditary styles of certain great Mahommedan nobles are exceptions that prove the rule; they represent reigning families whose raj has been absorbed in the imperial government, and they are still reigning princes in the sense in which the heads of German mediatized houses are so described (see Mediatization). For the rest, the titles of Oriental princes follow much the same gradation as those of the West. As caliph (q.v.), or vicar of the Prophet, the Ottoman sultan is in Islam the equivalent of the pope in Roman Catholic Christendom; his imperial dignity is signified by the Persian title of padishah (lord king), his function as leader of a militant religion by the style of “commander of the faithful” (see Amir). Shah is in Persia the equivalent of king; the style of shah-in-shah, king of kings, recalls the days of the Persian “great king” familiar in the Old Testament. Khan (prince) and amir (commander, lord) are other Eastern sovereign titles. Pasha and bey, originally exclusively military titles, are now used also as civilian titles of honour, but they are not hereditary. When the pashalik of Egypt was made hereditary the situation was ultimately regularized by bestowing on the pasha the Persian title of khedive (q.v.). In the Far East, Japan has adopted a system of titles, based on her ancient feudal hierarchy, which closely corresponds to that of Europe (see Japan). China, on the other hand, stands apart in the curious custom of bestowing titles on the ancestors of persons to be honoured, and in making them hereditary only for a limited number of generations' (see China: Social Customs). In Europe such posthumous honours are rendered only in the case of saints (see Canonization).
Of ecclesiastical titles of honour it can only be said that they tend to an even greater exaggeration than those bestowed on secular dignities. The swelling styles of the Eastern patriarchs are relics of the days when Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem were vying with each other for precedence (see Church History and Patriarch). The style
- ↑ E.g. Monsieur de la Rochefoucauld, for M. le duc de la R. In the United Kingdom the parallel custom stops short of dukes. All other peers, from marquesses to barons, are commonly spoken of and addressed by the title of lord.
- ↑ In Germany a distinction is drawn between those titles derived from estates still held by the head of the family and those that are landless. The latter are simply “of” (von), the former are “of and at” (von und zu).
- ↑ Thus in the Instructions annexed to the commission for the selection of the new order of baronets, King James I. gives these precedence over knights, “because this is a Dignity, which shall be Hereditary, wherein divers circumstances are more considerable, than such a Mark as is but Temporary.” (Selden, op. cit. p. 685.)
- ↑ The designation barin (boyarin, boyar) is not, properly speaking, a title, but the equivalent of “gentleman.”
