In Germany, an individual who graduates from medical school (or to be more precise: who has taken the medical state exam) has to complete a dissertation, like any other scientist, in order to be awarded a doctorate (“Dr. med.”). The majority of physicians in Germany are *Dr. med.*s, but sure enough not everyone (especially not in the Eastern part of the country). However, the medical doctorate has traditionally been the easiest to obtain to the point where it had become a mere formality (unlike Ph.D.s in other scientific fields which take many years of hard, dedicated scientific work).
In my childhood, our first family physician didn’t have the doctor title, but she was still referred to as “Dr. A.”
With veterinarians in the US there is an interesting twist. Historically schools came up with their own degree titles. Then, all veterinary colleges met to discuss uniformity, deciding on awarding a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) degree.
A lone holdout to the agreement was The University of Pennsylvania, that to this day awards its degree in their original Latin form of Veterinariae Medicinae Doctoris (VMD).
I think most schools now use the “English” form for most degrees – a BS rather than an SB. Harvard (though not Yale) is still a holdout awarding a “Scientiae Baccalaureus” rather than a “Bachelor of Science”. But I’ve never heard of any university in the US that awards a DPh or a DM instead of a PhD or MD. I know less about law schools, but I’ve never seen a DJ (and it’s unlikely it would be used given it’s other meaning), but I have seen some DJur degrees.
Nitpick: Chaucer was making a distinction that you are not making. A “doctour of physic” is more than someone who practices medicine. It is someone who is qualified to teach medicine and the philosophy of medicine. For Chaucer’s readers, it connotes age and status as well as profession, and is not the same as a modern M.D.
Thanks, but these seem to be cases where individual players have adopted a “Doctor” nickname. I was thinking more of a case where players are more or less automatically given the title of “doctor” after reaching certain performance scores or (in sports with discrete ranks) reaching a certain rank. For example, I could imagine a Karate association issuing a formal style guide suggesting that all participants with a rank of 5th dan and above be addressed as “sensei doctor”, participants from 2nd dan to 4th dan be addressed as “master sensei”, and participants with a rank of 1st dan be simply addressed as “sensei”.
I can only recall one example of a JD being called “doctor”. Here in Australia, the base legal degree, held by most practitioners, is the LL.B. When I was at Uni lo these many moons ago, even the academics tended not to have PhDs (although that has changed now).
Enter an American academic who had a JD, and who insisted on being called “Doctor”. I am confident he was exploiting the mere difference of nomenclature that applied for essentially the same level of qualification.
He was a …curious… character. Turns out he had a mistress unbeknownst to his wife. The mistress won a fortune in the lottery, and offered to take the good “doctor” away from it all. So he abandoned his family and his job (in the middle of marking season) and disappeared into the distance, never to be heard from again.