Up until about ten years ago, I always heard the top U.S. military medal thus described, as it is awarded by the President in the name of Congress. Then I noticed some members of the military rather stiffly saying that it was “correctly” referred to as just the “Medal of Honor” (so said the Denzel Washington character in the Gulf War I movie “Courage Under Fire,” for one).
Has the name of the medal actually changed? Does the military (or some members thereof) simply not like the association with Congress, which isn’t exactly a highly-respected body nowadays? Or is something else going on?
Reading around just a bit more I am gathering that it is properly called the Medal of Honor. However, since it is awarded by the President in the name of Congress it seems no one makes much of a fuss about it being called the Congressional Medal of Honor since technically it is Congress awarding the medal.
Exactly – the official styling of the decoration is was just “Medal of Honor”, the “congressional” bit was just popular usage. A military man who’s a stickler for proper forms would avoid using the common qualifier “congressional” because it is not official. AND there is the fact that you want to differentiate it from another entirely different award of later creation, officially styled the “Congressional Gold Medal of Honor”.
It adds a bit of puffery to the title to add that word. Like having a *Blue Ribbon * Panel of Judges instead of just a couple of judges. Such an important award seems to create a need in some people to lengthen the title to make it seem even more special in an official kind of way.
Not necessarily. The term “medal of honour” is pretty generic, and if spoken without sufficient context (particularly to non-Americans) will probably prompt the question, “Which medal of honour?” I wouldn’t be surprised if half the countries in the world had a military or civil award referred to as a medal of honour, or with the words “medal of honour” somewhere in the name. The moniker “Congressional” goes some way towards disambiguating the source and nature of the award: there are only a handful of countries which have a Congress, the most well-known of which is the United States.
Actually, spelling it correctly–“Medal of Honor” versus your “Medal of Honour”–goes very much further in “disambirguating the sources and nature of the award.”
Also, when no qualifier is offered, it is understood that one is referring to decorations awarded by the nation in whose military the person serves. Foreign awards are qualified by their origin. In the case of the USA, as mentioned, adding “Congressional” actually has the potential to create greater confusion.
