Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1909-10-23
NO TITLE. FOR BACHELORS
SOCIETY HAS NO FORM OF AID.
DRESS FOR UNMARRIED MEN.
The Origin Of Some Of Our Present
Titles and Their Early
Significance.
From the Pail Mall Gazette.

From the PAN Mall Gazette.
It Is not to be supposed that the demand
for a new title to distinguish bachelors
from married men will ever be satisfied
The British empire at large Is invited to
suggest one, but we seem to have lost
the faculty Of devising new words. 1t
would be convenient A good many young
men who have taken on the precious bur-
den of a wife not only throw it of. but
ignore 1t when they find a chance: this
wicked levity would be dangerous If they
had also to resume designation to
which they had no longer any right. But
there is little profit in discussing reforms.
however excellent, which will never be
carried out. Lord" (Haford) and Lady"
Lhaefdige) suff1ced our ancestors for an
indefinite length of time: il they rightly
mean "loaf-owner'' and '1oaf-giver" they
might be applied to all who had servants
and dependents. evild or cevil. as the old
phrase went. At any rate, no others are
recorded.
We can scarcely grasp the condition OF
society, raised high above the stage Of
barbarism. where titles other than those
pertaining to office are unknown. 1t al
ways puzzles an intelligent schoelboy to
read one of the little speeches In Greek
or Latin. history, where rough fellow
addresses some great parsonage by his
bare name, as it might be Thomas" or
Jones'" with no intention OF disrespect,
as matter of course. But II lord and
lady" were restricted to persons of rank.
as is generally supposed, 1t was the same
with our own people, SO far as appears.
Many vocabularies survive from the tenth
century downward, but 1t is not until the
French 'maistre" without change of pro-
nunciation. "Magistre" does not appear
in the early lists, though used In contem-
porary dialogues, where 1t means school-
master. 1t is thought vulgar now to call
a teacher learner" but Archbishop
Aelfric knew no other English word for a
schoolmaster 0areow).
Women Without Title.
Woman had to do without a title a
good deal longer apparently. But those
good old words. "gaffer' and "gammer,"
call for more notice than is granted
them generally. They are ignored in the
vocabularies, so far as we have observed.
but that proves nothing at all-only a
minute fraction of English words figures
there. "Gaffer" sounds very odd and racy.
The elderly can recollect In familiar
use through the remoter districts OF the
Midlands. 1.-THE gaffer" was the farmer,
but any man of standing could be de-
scribed as CATER So-and-so. 1t may be
that it should have escaped record of no.
tice is not extraordinary. "Gammer' we
do not personally recollect. But "goody"
was still current. On the analogy Of loaf
this also should have been a serious title
once.
All who CHANGED to think upon the sub
ject must have been puzzled by the num-
her of French terms for kinship in Eng
lish. as nephew. niece, cousin, uncle.
.yraud- Those who still fancy tQAt the
use Of French words for cooked meat,
while the name of the animal remains
English, should be interpreted to mean
that our unfortunate ancestors never
conclude on the same reasoning that they
had no uncles, nieces, aunts or even
grandfathers. In fact, If the assurance be
necessary, they had as many OF these rel
atives before the conquest as after, ana
names for them all their own. 1t was the
lawyers and proctors of the ecclesiastical
court no doubt who gradually intro
duced the foreign terms. But "eem" IN
the sense Of kin was not lost In STAFFORD
shire sixty years ago. Properly 1t signi-
fies an uncle, like the Cape Dutch loom. :"
Curious Origin Of miss"
The origin Of miss is so curious that
one must be circumspect In dealing with
It, The obvious derivation is from mis-
tress, but it is by no means 80 simple as
it looks. date for the Introduction can
be assigned within very few years-which
itself is remarkable. John Evelyn gives
number Of references-the abbreviati6n
was new and shocking to him. In 1852 he
goes to see the flair and famous come
dian Roxalana," and there hears talk Of
misses. ''as at that time they began to
call these women" There Is redundant
evidence to the same effect Never did
word undergo a stranger transformation!
The reason is that It supplied felt
want" growing more and more urgent
regardless of its Observation-Disclosures
them aside and forgot them. In less than
fifty years we find miss" thoroughly es-
tablished: Pope's correspondents would
have been Mortified, no doubt. to hear how
it arose But ladies of high rank could
not forget so easily. All through Lady
Mary Wortley's correspondence In the
eighteenth century the title never occurs.
Lady Mary's daughter. born In 1716. left
it on record that people called her Mis-
tress'' while in the nursery; but the
"Reminiscences proves that before her death
that form Of address to a girl had be-
come obsolete and even ridiculous. Miss
had definitely triumphed.