Near as I can figure, enlisted naval personnel–and well as lower-ranking commissioned officers–must address a naval officer who outranks them as “Mister” (not abbreviated in naval usage). What about women naval officers? I know there have been women admirals, such as the Admiral Grace Hopper who invented the computer language COBOL. Should lower-ranking naval personnel address a woman officer as “Mister,” or “Ms.,” or whatever? (I’ve never been in military service.)
They can be addressed as “Maam” or by Rank alone…IE…::Sharp salute:: “Good Morning Lieutenant (insert last name if you know it)”…Officers over the rank of Lieutenant commander are never Called Mister or Maam…only the JO’s or Junior officers are addressed that way.
The Captain of a ship is always addressed as Captain,regardless of his rank.(smaller ships can have Lieutenants for “captains”).
The second in command or Executive officer is addressed as XO.All respective officers can be called by there respective duties. The Navigator can be called “Nav”…Weapons officer …“weps”.
When in doubt…use SIR…((we (ex)enlisted men are just saluting the UNIFORM…NOT the person inside it!))
Rich “G7SUBS”
My understanding of historical naval practice is that warrant officers and commissioned officers from the ranks of Ensign to Lieutenant Commander were referred to as Mister [Name], while Commanders, Captains and Admirals were referred to as Commander [Name], Captain [Name], or Admiral [Name], as appropriate. (The background for this is the ranks Ensign through Lieutenant Commander are all derived from the rank of Lieutenant or a warrant officer rank, while Commander and Captain are derived from Captain, and warrant officers and Lieutenants were referred to as Mister.)
However, this practice was changed sometime in the decade or two after WWII, and now it is proper to refer to commissioned officers of any rank by the name of that rank (i.e. Ensign [Name] or Lieutenant [Name]).
I believe that there are still some ranks such as warrant officer and midshipman that may be referred to as Mister, but I’m not sure.
–Bill
You don’t have a thing to worry about. I’ll have the jury eating out of my hand. Meanwhile, try to escape.
Sig by Wally M7, master signature architect to the SDMB
Thanks 
Aren’t midshipmen in the USN just called cadets, now days? Cadet is more gender neutral than midshipman, anyway.
We called Midshipmen Boyscouts or “Middies” .On their “summer” cruises it was good fun to send them looking for 50ft of shoreline, a gallon of propwash, or a tub of relative bearing grease.((laughs just thinking about that))
Rich “G7SUBS”
Nope, Naval Academy and Naval ROTC students are always called midshipmen, never cadets. Cadet is reserved for Army and Air Force academy and ROTC students. This is unlikely to change. All military organizations keep long and fast traditions, but none so well as the Navy.
BTW, this always bugged me about the Star Trek mythos. Star Fleet is obviously a naval service, with naval traditions and standards, yet the academy trainees are cadets rather than midshipmen. What gives? Methinks the first writer to use the term on the show was ignorant of naval traditions. Too bad. “Midshipman” is a much more interesting, and archaic term than “cadet.” What a wonderful juxtaposition that would have made in the 24th century setting.
I’m guessing that Star Fleet Academy might have evolved from the Air Force, and could have been rolled into Star Fleet later on. The term cadet could have come from there. What I find interesting is that Star Fleet continues to use the rank of Commodore in the 24th century, but our Navy has already replaced it with the much easier to say “Rear Admiral (Lower Half)”.
Well, perhaps the Star Fleet Academy evolved from the United States Coast Guard Academy, which calls its students Cadets. See http://www.cga.edu/ .
I was going to post this on a new thread, but here’s this one all ready to go. Cool.
They do address women officers (High ranking ones, at least) as “Sir” on Star Trek. Why is that? And does it happen in real life?
Peace,
mangeorge
Teach your kids to bungee jump.
One them might have to cross a bridge someday.
I was going to post this on a new thread, but here’s this one all ready to go. Cool.
They do address women officers (High ranking ones, at least) as “Sir” on Star Trek. Why is that? And does it happen in real life?
Peace,
mangeorge
Teach your kids to bungee jump.
One them might have to cross a bridge someday.
I was going to post this on a new thread, but here’s this one all ready to go. Cool.
They do address women officers (High ranking ones, at least) as “Sir” on Star Trek. Why is that? And does it happen in real life?
Peace,
mangeorge
Teach your kids to bungee jump.
One them might have to cross a bridge someday.
Capitain Spock addressed Lieutenant Savik as mister Savik in The Wrath of Kahn…
Capitain Spock addressed Lieutenant Savik as mister Savik in The Wrath of Kahn…
Oh that brought back memories. With a little cooperation you can have a guy wandering around a ship for hours on a never ending snipe hunt. The bearing grease seems to be the one it takes them the longest to figure out.
*Star Trek * uses a pseudo navy hierarchy but didn’t fill in all the blanks. There are no enlisted ranks in star fleet, which throws the whole thing out of kilter. Someone has to do the shit jobs and there will still be plenty of them in the 23rd century.
My guess as to the reason behind Star Trek’s calling ranking officers “Sir” and “Mister” regardless of gender is that it is to avoid sex discrimination in their military system. In other words, “Sir” and “Mister” have become non-gender-discriminatory terms because they are equally applicable to each sex. This fits in nicely with a number of the somewhat radical, for the time, social views expressed in the original series.
I’m not sure about the lack of enlisted personnel in Star Trek. Assuming the sleeve insignia in the original series corresponds to the current U.S. Navy rank marks, Kirk would be Lieutenant Commander (2-1/2 stripes), and everyone else would be a Lieutenant or an Ensign (one or two stripes) I forget whether anyone had 1-1/2 stripes, corresponding to Lieutenant (junior grade). As I mentioned before, everyone of these ranks (gender permitting) would be addressed as “Mister” under the old navy forms of address. (By the way, in correction to my earlier post, the naval regulation change from calling Lieutenants “Mister” to “Lieutenant” occured in 1972.) Kirk, though only a Lt. Commander would be entitled to the courtesy title of Captain as commanding officer of a ship.
Now, in addition to the officers with sleeve stripes, there were a number of (mostly minor and non-recurring) characters with no sleeve insignia, including, most famously, the red-shirted security guys who get killed immediately after their introduction. It seems to me that these folks would make up the enlisted ranks of the Enterprise.
I would surmise that the bridge officers would be all commissioned, because on a 23rd century automated ship you don’t need an enlisted quartermaster to actually hold the steering wheel steady. Likewise the Engineering and Medical officers would be commissioned. Though there are obviously jobs on a Star Fleet ship that don’t call for an officer, they would call for fairly highly trained enlisted personnel, so the distinction between officers and enlisted is probably much less than that in the current armed forces. It’s not to surprising that the show simply does not focus on the enlisted folks that would be on the Enterprise.