Originally, in England, an esquire was a sort of servant or apprentice to a knight, usually himself of high birth and likely to become a knight in his turn. In its shorter form squire the word came to be associated with untitled members of the upper classes, particularly but not only if they owned extensive working estates that yielded an income. As such, these squires often retained certain powers and duties that had gone with the land since the remote past, such as appointing vicars to local parishes and acting as a justice of the peace in minor cases. This seems to have lasted well into the 20th Century, when it was a plot point in a number of P.G. Wodehouse stories.
In time the postnomial Esquire or Esq. would be extended by courtesy to most professionals or to just about anyone who possessed an advanced degree (very few, of course, until fairly recently). However, an important caveat was that you didn’t sign yourself esquire; rather it was a title accorded to you by others as a mark of respect, or at least of what one might call exalted courtesy. You wouldn’t use the title in the return address of your stationery, but your friends and colleagues might append it to your name when addressing mail to you.
Today in the United States, the title Esquire is virtually synonymous with “Attorney at Law”. And although one traditionally wasn’t supposed to apply the title to one’s own name, one often sees it now on attorneys’ business cards, and in the directories of office buildings. One very obvious advantage in the use of Esquire or Esq is that it requires far fewer letters than “Attorney at Law”.
But when did this usage become so widespread? I’m pretty sure it was within my lifetime. Growing up in the 1960s and 70s, if I thought about it at all, an Esquire was a quaint figure from a Victorian novel. The eponymous character referred to by Disneyland’s “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” was an Esquire, but he certainly wasn’t a lawyer. For a period in the early 1970s, a friend and I would call each other Esquire when joking around; but the allusion here was to fictional characters like Phileas Fogg, or IRL to those late Victorian Englishmen who belonged to posh clubs and/or mounted daring long distance balloon flights and the like. I don’t think lawyers were using the title then the way they are now. But suddenly by the mid to late 1980s, it seemed to be nearly universal. If memory serves, none of the fifty states actually prohibits non-lawyers from using the the title Esquire, but the ABA does caution against doing so in any way that might improperly imply a privileged attorney-client relationship.
I’m pretty sure I remember the title Esquire being used by lawyers in the late 1960’s, when I was still in high school. My big brother was studying to be a lawyer at the time, and I remember hearing that from him at the time.
Yeah, I get a little tingle of aristocratic largesse when I get letters addressed to me as ‘Malden Capell, Esquire’, but I’ve never known what it signified.
I should have said at the outset that I didn’t know any lawyers, really, while I was growing up so that might account for my impressions on the custom. Still, in my city at least it didn’t seem to be so widespread. For example, it wasn’t until fairly recently that I saw the title in the lobby directory of a building.
Note that this is an American thing. Lawyers in Canada don’t. It’s always puzzled me why lawyers in a republican country cling to this fossil from a hierarchical, monarchical society.
In the UK, it’s still used, by some, as an old fashioned and very formal form of address (replacing Mr, but as a suffix, obviously) for any man, when contacting them on a formal matter. It’s a traditional way of being complimentary to the rank and file by inflating their social standing.
I remember, at least up to some time in the 90’s (1990’s that is) still receiving paper bank statements addressed to O.Bastable, Esq. Can’t remember the last time I got a paper bank statement, so I have no idea if UK banks still use it as a standard term of address for male customers.
If any group is impressed by their own status and prestige, surely lawyers are near the front of the line. It always semi-amuses me when I call a law office and ask to speak with a lawyer (I do so for work on occassion), and the response is “I’ll see if Attorney Jones is available.” Increasingly (or at least it’s increasing to my attention), lawyers want to use “Attorney” as an honorific, in much the same manner as physicians like to be called “Doctor”.
Again, that is not a universal trait amongst lawyers; maybe it is in the US. Just like I’ve not seen the use of “esquire” in Canada, I’ve never heard “Attorney” used as an honorific. (We don’t use the term at all, anyway, but as an honorific? That would trigger some serious ribbing from colleagues at the bar.)
It isn’t very common here in the DC area. I’ve heard it maybe once or twice, and the it was calling a much older attorney’s office. It sounded extremely odd to me then.
I grew up in the 60’s in a family chock full of lawyers and nobody ever used Esquire, that I recall. Every time I saw it, it seemed a bit self-aggrandizing. It’s perfectly at home in a world where lawyers advertise on TV.