Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1901-06-28
CURIOsITRs OF TITLES.
with More Than They Can Re-
member-Orisin of Some.

with More Than They Can Re-
member-Orisin of Some.
Eldest sons of peers have no real
light to the titles they are known by.
These are theirs purely by courtesy.
The son of peer shares none of the
privileges conferred by law on peers
l,f the realm. He is on exactly the
same footing as any other commoner.
There is, however, one remarkable eX-
,eption to this. The eldest son of
The duke of Northumberland is Earl
Percy, a peer in his own right, and en-
titled to seat in the house of lords,
says London Tit-Bits.
Eldest sons of marquises have, as
rule, the empty honor of an earldom
to fall back on. Three, however, the
heirs to Weymouth, Salisbury and
Townshend, are viscounts only. Most
Of our 1913 earls have also secondary
title, viscounty or barony, for their
heirs. 1t is not till we come to our
30 viscounts that we find their eldest
sons addressed simply as ''honor-
able.''
| To rise step to royalties, the til
ties given to eldest sons of sovereigns
are curiously varied. Two, the heirs
to the Austrian and German thrones,
are known as princes imperial" Prince
royal is used in Bavaria, Greece, Den
mark, Saxony, Wurtemburg and
Sweden. Russia stands by herself in
callingher heir"czarewitch," and Spain,
too, has unique title in infant" or
'infata," which have been used for
the past nine centuries. In other
>f
some territory which he rarely sees,
over which he has no jurisdiction and
from which he draws no revenue. Sim
liar titles to prince of Wales are borne
| by the Flemish duke of Brabant and
the Portuguese don of Alcantara.
One of the most peculiar titles ever
conferred on royal children was that
formerly bestowed on the heirs of the
German emperors, "most noble purple
born"
The tiles of many monarchs have as
small foundation as those of their
children. The king of Sardinia in very
recent times used to waste two sheets
| of paper in all official letters in de-
scribing himself as king of Cyprus
Sicily and Jerusalem, as well as duke,
prince, count and marquis of over A
other districts in most of which the
people had probably never even heard
of him. At the very same time the king
of Naples also professed to be king of
Jerusalem, just as our own monarchs
kept the title king of France for two
full centuries after losing their last
acre of French soil. One of the most
| amusing examples ever known of this
claiming of titles was seen in a British
treaty made with the last mogu1 en-
peror of Delhi. He began by calling
himself tsking of the world" yet the
treaty is full of humble concessions to
the people who had so lately defeated
him.
Most of the royal titles used to-day
are of comparatively modern origin;
liking" is probably the most ancient.
The title liking of kings" appearing in
| almost every line, were the words
| which gave the key to the cuneiform
inscription on the old Assyrian tombs.
EMPEROR which means simply "com
| mander in Chief" was the next in or
der of time. Curiously enough, it en-
tirely disappeared in Europe for four
centuries, and was revived by the great
French monarch Charlemagne Oh
Christmas day, A. D. 800.
''Duke" was a sovereign title for a
Long time, and there are still five reign
ing German dukes whose titles are no
| mere empty ones. ttElector" was a
very great title, indeed, at one time;
but that, too, has fallen. The last to
go was the dictatorship of Hesse-Casse1
| in 1866. The latter more frequently
was called 'landgrave," a title his an.
cestors chose to distinguish them
selves from the swarm of counts
around them.
"Czar," now so famous, was at one
time quite a secondary title of Rus
sia's rulers. "Great lord, grand duke.
autocrat and czar" were the original
titles of Russia's sovereigns. In 1547
Ivan Nv. was crowned car of Moscow.
and later on his descendants became.
by conquest, cars Of all the Russias-
great, little, new, black, red, white and
southern Russia. Then Peter the
Great thought he would like the title
of emperor, and took it. This caused
| a desperate quarrel with the emperor
of Germany, who, as the inheritor of
the title of the old Roman emperors,
| thought no one else had any right to
use it.
Sultan" is not a specially ancient
title. Turks think much more of the
| word "caiph," which means "substi-
tute'-that is, substitute here on earth
for the prophet Mahomet, still consid-
cred their actual head. The sultan of
Turkey is caliph of Damascus, Cor
dova, Bagdad, Fee, Grenada, Egypt,
Morocco and Tunis. A rather remark
able thing about the present sultan is
that he is not of the family of the
prophet at all. Therefore all the emirs,
which is the name given to MahOmet,S