English is Crazy #3 [History of Titles & Honorifics]
Hello, nice to meet you, Murrrrrrr Smith, may I take your coat, Murrrrrr Smith? Hmm?? MURRR??
That’s how we’d sound if we pronounced “Mr.” as its own word. Kinda crazy, right?
But ever wonder why with women, we actually call them by the abbreviation instead of the whole word? Like, we actually read out “Mrs.” as “missiz” or “missus.” And what is the whole word anyway?? What is “Mrs.” short for??
I’ve heard people say it’s the possessive form of “Mister.” Like, “Mister’s.” (It’s not.)
And then we also have “Ms.” And again we just read it out with “miz.” What’s the whole word?? What’s going on?? Do we even know what we’re saying??
Let’s talk about it!
Mr. / Mister
Mr. is the abbreviated form of “mister.” I’m going to take you through how it came to be, but we’ve got to start from the beginning. The BEGINNING, beginning:
[5,000ish BCE] Many, many years ago, there was a language called Proto Indo European, AKA PIE. There’s no direct evidence of this language, but a ton of work has gone into reconstructing it through documented Indo European languages. PIE is believed to be the ancestor of language families like Latin, Germanic (that’s English!), Slavic, Indic, Iranian, and others.
Anyway, we think that PIE had this root, *meg, which means “great.” And that this root contributed to lots of words in today’s English, like “magnitude,” “magistrate,” and “magnificent.”
So this brings us back to “mister”:
[450ish CE] PIE *meg → Latin “magister”/“magester” → Old English “mægester”
By the way, here’s what some other languages did over time with the Latin version:
Old French “maistre” → Modern French “maître”
Spanish and Italian → “maestro”
Portuguese → “mestre”
[1100s] Since the Old French version “maistre” was pretty similar to the Old English one, the French one ended up affecting the English after the Norman Conquest. Then the English word became “maister,” and eventually evolved into both “master” & “mister.”
[1400s] Earliest known use of the abbreviation “Mr.”
[1700s] “Mister” and “Master” became their own separate words.
[1900s & 2000s] The meaning of the word “master” expanded over time, and today, it’s used in lots of different ways, like to refer to someone who’s skilled in something or holds an academic degree of some sort (master of disguise, Master of Arts), it’s also the title of a male principal in England (headmaster), and it describes a man who owns other people, animals, or property.
Also, in England, it was used to refer to young boys. It’s kind of out of style now though, but if you’re not from England and you don’t know what I’m talking about, think of Geoffrey from the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. He addressed Will as “Master William,” Hilary as “Miss Hilary,” Aunt Viv as “Madam,” and Uncle Phil as “Sir.”`
Meanwhile, today, “mister” is for all men, unless they have a profession or rank that comes with its own thing, like “Sir” for knights, and “Dr.” for doctors. Mister is also used to address men holding office, like “Mr. President,” and for pageantry, like “Mr. Universe.”
Mrs. & Miss
[1300s] Okay so here comes a whole lot of history. “Mrs.” is short for “mistress.” It’s the feminine form of both “mister” and “master,” and evolved from the Old French “maistresse.”
And, initially, it meant the same thing as the male version, “master,” and therefore, was used to address women who filled the criteria (mainly upper class women) regardless of their marital status.
[1400s] People started using “mistress” to also refer to a woman having an affair with a married man. Also, “mistress” started to get abbreviated, but sometimes it was as “Mres.” There weren’t any hard fast rules.
[1500s & 1600s] People started attaching “Mrs.” to the names of married women as well. And a man might call his wife “my Mrs.” or “the Mrs.” in writing.
[1700s] Johnson’s Dictionary was published in England in 1755, and definitions for the entry “Mistress” included: “a woman who governs,” “a woman skilled in anything,” “a term of contemptuous address,” and, “a whore or concubine.”
Contemptuous?? A whore or concubine?? A woman having an affair?? What did you just call me?? A word that once expressed respect and power is now an insult!
But notice how the entry doesn’t mention marital status. This usage didn’t seem to be as popular yet.
Anyway, this is also around when people started pronouncing it as “missiz,” “missus,” or “missis.”
I know, it’s all a big mess. So if it helps, these were the rules for using the abbreviations during this time:
“When a title of civility only, contracted ‘Mistress’ into ‘Missis’. Thus ‘Mrs. Montague’, ‘Mrs. Carter’, &c. are pronounced ‘Missis Montague’, ‘Missis Carter’, &c. To pronounce the word as it is written would, in these cases, appear quaint and pedantick.” — A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language, page 370, published in 1791.
[Why’s “pedantic” spelled like that?? Find the history of spelling here.]
But if you thought the circus ended there, well. Another differentiation came about during this time. “Miss,” which is also from “mistress,” was originally used for young girls and adult women who were prostitutes. But now it started becoming acceptable for all adult women who were unmarried. That usage is still popular today, and we also use it for pageantry, like “Miss America.”
Also, we can’t really do this without context. You should know that there was something called coverture in England, which was then carried into the US, and it went like this:
While single, a woman had the legal right to go about business as she pleased; she could file lawsuits, sign and execute contracts, and manage or sell her own property. But after marrying, she couldn’t do any of those things on her own, and her husband even had the legal right to take control of and sell her properties without her consent. And if she had a business or a salary? It was now his.
This is because, under coverture, a wife wasn’t her own person — she legally belonged to her husband.
“By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband…” — English jurist Sir William Blackstone, from his treatise Commentaries on the Laws of England, p. 279, published in the 1700s.
So since a married woman “consolidated” into her husband, people referred to married women not only as “Mrs.” but also by their husband’s full name. This means a woman named Jane Doe who married a man named John Smith, would socially become “Mrs. John Smith,” instead of “Mrs. Jane Doe.” (Whereas, a married man would continue to be called by his own full name.)
But at this point, the titles for women were too confusing. And you didn’t always know if a woman was married or not. And how could a respectable title like “mistress” ALSO mean something vulgar at the same time? And more importantly, how do you address a woman without getting smacked in the face???
Introducing:
Ms.
[1900s] In 1901, an article in The Sunday Republican, a Massachusetts newspaper, proposed the following:
“There is a void in the English language which … we undertake to fill. Every one has been put in an embarrassing position by ignorance of the status of some woman. To call a maiden Mrs is only a shade worse than to insult a matron with the inferior title Miss. … what is needed is a more comprehensive term which does homage to the sex without expressing any views as to their domestic situation … The abbreviation Ms is simple … For oral use it might be rendered as “Mizz,” which would be a close parallel to the practice long universal in many bucolic regions, where a slurred Mis’ does duty for Miss and Mrs alike.”
This wasn’t exactly a new concept. People sometimes abbreviated “mistress” to “Ms.” even before then, but it wasn’t popular. And even after the proposal, it still took a long time to catch on. But today in many places, it’s become the preferred abbreviation for women.
Anyway, the 1900s brought some big changes for women, and it affected how they were addressed:
So, for starters, women got full rights to vote in the US and England in the 1920s. But it wasn’t like, bam! Now you can vote. Everything is solved! There were still lots of problems, and even more so for women of color. For example, in 1926, a group of Black women were beaten in Alabama for trying to register to vote.
This century is also when the shift was complete, and “Mrs.” became exclusively for married women.
But also, referring to married women by their husband’s name as a default, whether full or partial, AKA “Mrs. John Smith” or “Mrs. Smith,” started falling out of favor. It didn’t happen all at once. It was more like, different newspapers, organizations, and institutions had their own style guides and ways of speaking. For example, the Washington Post’s style guide for “Mrs.” over the years is here.
Then, in 1932, Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, wrote a letter to the New York Times. In it, she asked them to stop calling her “Mrs. Putnam.” She was Amelia Earhart!! She wanted to be called by her own name. So women were shaking it up (as always), and attitudes were shifting, albeit slowly.
In 1972, Gloria Steinem, Patricia Carbine, and some other really cool women launched a magazine called “Ms.” It’s still around today.
All the while, coverture was being dropped in stages, starting from the US in the 1800s. But this article is already pretty long and you have things to do, so we’ve skipped that century. Anyway, in 1974 it became illegal in the US for banks to refuse to give a woman a credit card based on her gender, or to require her husband to cosign or be the sole signer.
Then, in about 1976, a woman could no longer be barred from voting in the US under her maiden name. This means a married woman could now decide whether or not she wanted to take her husband’s surname — without facing discrimination.
And in 1992 women were finally recognized as, well, not property, and it became illegal for a man to rape his wife in England. I mean, 1992?? That’s like yesterday for millennials?? And still, today, the law hasn’t completely changed on that one across the US.
[2000s] A woman, married or not, is now legally recognized as her own person, and can decide what she wants to be called. I mean, more or less. Of course, different cultures and communities have their own customs, struggles, and rules.
But for the most part, in a legal sense, people in England and the US can do what makes them happy in this regard. Lots of women today still take their husband’s last name, like “Jane Smith.” Some keep their own; “Jane Doe.” And some hyphenate the two names; “Jane Doe-Smith.”
And then there are couples who come up with a brand new name together. And there are men who take their wife’s surname. And there are same-sex couples that do what they feel like. It’s become a personal preference.
When it comes to the title itself, the default in many places is now Ms, but women can also decide for themselves which one they want to use. And today, many people assign their own personal meanings to their titles, and to taking (or not taking) their partner’s name, and it’s not always a sign of oppression.
There’s so much more to say on the topic, including the history of “Sir,” and “Madam,” but that’ll have to wait for another time.
Thanks for reading. What did you think? Share your thoughts in the comments section!
