More about Titles
Nov. 12th, 2008 04:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerA follow-up to the title post before, because people brought lots of interesting suggestions.
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visualthinker suggested occupation based titles, which I like, because a profusion of titles suggests a status-conscious society and because they give the world texture.
Some things (Judge X, Officer Y, noble titles generally) can be transferred as is, but doctors and religious figures don’t transfer directly and mages—well, we don’t have mages, so there’s nothing to transfer.
Doctor titles are a problem because, to me (and I think to many people, although I could be wrong), doctor sounds very modern. Doctor is white coats and hypodermic needles and tall glass-faced hospitals, not herbs and magical healing. Healer says herbs and magic, but I think it sounds silly, especially in a quasi-Victorian fantasy. The characters think of themselves as modern (although they don’t mean quite what we do by it).
Given that the doctors do have magic, they could have religious titles—actually I rather like that idea; it makes perfect sense that healing magic would be seen as a gift from God—I’ve considered using Sage, as they consider the herb sacred, but that’s probably best reserved for Grand High Awesome Healers.
The generic religious title seems to be priest (although I argued with a Catholic friend whether or not that counts as generic, so) but it’s very specifically male, while priestess has associations with quasi-pagan oppressed goddess worship religions. My dad thinks I ought to call the female priests “priests,” and the males “priesters,” which would amuse me but possibly be ill-advised.
I might use curate. It means essentially the right thing—clergyman in charge of a parish (obviously it’s gendered, but it’s a less common word so perhaps less of a problem) and it has the word “cure” right in there
A title-happy culture is definitely going to have a title for mages—assuming it isn’t outlawed, which it isn’t—so what’s that going to be? Mage has the advantage of being gender-neutral, unlike enchantress or sorceress (and enchantress in particular carries sexual connotations). It also isn’t pejorative like witch.
If the mages are academic “professor” might also work, although I think a guild-like program would be just as likely. It depends what magic does, perhaps—if it’s work-a-day stuff like purifying water it’s much less likely to be a prestigious, academic, or socially highfalutin.
The larger problem with this suggestion, I think, is that professions do need to be fairly highfalutin before the get a title. “Farmer John” or “Street-Sweeper Jane” sounds like a children’s book. Also, how do you deal with people whose professions you don’t know, or those too young to have professions? There’s still a need for a courtesy title.
ochre54 suggested mother or sister as a courtesy title (and I would add daughter, to be used for children), which I like, provided it doesn’t confuse the readers about who is actually related to whom. Plus it comes with a ready-made set of male counterpart terms.
On the other hand, sister really does sound like nuns—I might even want to use it for nuns. I may not call them nuns as that suggests habits and abbeys and so forth, and I’m really thinking more like the female equivalent of Buddhist monks, in a “they travel around and live humbly and a lot of people have a short period of monk/nunhood when they’re young” sort of way, not a kung-fu action movie killer monk way.
Back to topic. Maybe I can just have social equals refer to each other by their last names, like British books, which I always thought was so cool.
girl_called_sun suggested adding suffixes to the last names, which I also think is cool, but I have gobs of stuff to say about names and suffixes/prefixes (names, as you may have guessed, occupy a lot of my brain) and this post is already approaching tl;dr territory, so I’ll write about that later.
visualthinker suggested occupation based titles, which I like, because a profusion of titles suggests a status-conscious society and because they give the world texture.Some things (Judge X, Officer Y, noble titles generally) can be transferred as is, but doctors and religious figures don’t transfer directly and mages—well, we don’t have mages, so there’s nothing to transfer.
Doctor titles are a problem because, to me (and I think to many people, although I could be wrong), doctor sounds very modern. Doctor is white coats and hypodermic needles and tall glass-faced hospitals, not herbs and magical healing. Healer says herbs and magic, but I think it sounds silly, especially in a quasi-Victorian fantasy. The characters think of themselves as modern (although they don’t mean quite what we do by it).
Given that the doctors do have magic, they could have religious titles—actually I rather like that idea; it makes perfect sense that healing magic would be seen as a gift from God—I’ve considered using Sage, as they consider the herb sacred, but that’s probably best reserved for Grand High Awesome Healers.
The generic religious title seems to be priest (although I argued with a Catholic friend whether or not that counts as generic, so) but it’s very specifically male, while priestess has associations with quasi-pagan oppressed goddess worship religions. My dad thinks I ought to call the female priests “priests,” and the males “priesters,” which would amuse me but possibly be ill-advised.
I might use curate. It means essentially the right thing—clergyman in charge of a parish (obviously it’s gendered, but it’s a less common word so perhaps less of a problem) and it has the word “cure” right in there
A title-happy culture is definitely going to have a title for mages—assuming it isn’t outlawed, which it isn’t—so what’s that going to be? Mage has the advantage of being gender-neutral, unlike enchantress or sorceress (and enchantress in particular carries sexual connotations). It also isn’t pejorative like witch.
If the mages are academic “professor” might also work, although I think a guild-like program would be just as likely. It depends what magic does, perhaps—if it’s work-a-day stuff like purifying water it’s much less likely to be a prestigious, academic, or socially highfalutin.
The larger problem with this suggestion, I think, is that professions do need to be fairly highfalutin before the get a title. “Farmer John” or “Street-Sweeper Jane” sounds like a children’s book. Also, how do you deal with people whose professions you don’t know, or those too young to have professions? There’s still a need for a courtesy title.
ochre54 suggested mother or sister as a courtesy title (and I would add daughter, to be used for children), which I like, provided it doesn’t confuse the readers about who is actually related to whom. Plus it comes with a ready-made set of male counterpart terms. On the other hand, sister really does sound like nuns—I might even want to use it for nuns. I may not call them nuns as that suggests habits and abbeys and so forth, and I’m really thinking more like the female equivalent of Buddhist monks, in a “they travel around and live humbly and a lot of people have a short period of monk/nunhood when they’re young” sort of way, not a kung-fu action movie killer monk way.
Back to topic. Maybe I can just have social equals refer to each other by their last names, like British books, which I always thought was so cool.
girl_called_sun suggested adding suffixes to the last names, which I also think is cool, but I have gobs of stuff to say about names and suffixes/prefixes (names, as you may have guessed, occupy a lot of my brain) and this post is already approaching tl;dr territory, so I’ll write about that later.
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no subject
Date: 2008-11-13 12:47 am (UTC)I forget what the earlier post said, but do you need titles for everyone? Early Anglo-American society did reserve titles for people of status-- the entitled, even. Ordinary times were just "Edward Smith". And then they had Goodman and then Master, though obvs you wouldn't want those specific ones.
Re: surnames, I would think more the opposite-- that equals would use given names, and non-equals would use surnames.
I guess the real question to figure first is whether this is a very level society (a la the Quakers) or a very hierarchical society, where titles would be wrapped up in class. Do they care about status, and if so, what is the biggest criterion for status-- wealth? magical ability? calling/profession?
no subject
Date: 2008-11-13 02:43 pm (UTC)I was thinking the equals would use surnames for people they didn't know very well - the culture has some long-standing superstitions about bad magic being used with given names, and while most people don't really believe them, they don't quite not, either.
Admittedly, this does create a problem if you're calling both strange social equals and servants by their surnames, although it would probably be a giveaway that the servants are going to reply with "Miss X."
They do care about status, although the different societies (there are a number of different societies that developed fairly recently from a common root) reckon it in different ways. Birth, education, and certain types of magical ability are all important; also to a certain extent wealth, although they wouldn't admit it.
It occurs to me--given I have a baroque system where citizens all have a given name, surname, and clan name--I could make use of the clan name for more formal address.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-13 10:42 pm (UTC)I do like the job titles idea, but getting it to work seems tricky.
If it's a very equal society, there could be no titles at all?
no subject
Date: 2008-11-14 03:40 am (UTC)...yes, I know that's weird.
It's not a particularly equal society, so that's a bit of a moot point. I tend to think that humans are too status conscious to get rid of titles anyway, no matter how equal the society is.