I’d like to know about honorifics for women in Spanish.
In German, “Fraulein” used to refer to unmarried women and “Frau” to married women. Now, “Fraulein” only refers to young girls or it’s used quaintly. “Frau” is now the default.
In French, “mademoiselle” and “madame” have had the same trajectory as their equivalents in Germany.
It used to be that “master” was for unmarried men and “mister” for married men. Now “mister” is the default.
I’d like to know about Spanish. There is “senorita” and “senora”. Is there a third term? Is there a default one? If you meet someone on the street, what do you use? Do you try to guess a stranger’s virginity/marriage status? What do businesses use when contacting women in a letter or to ask for them on the phone?
Bonus question: Is “Ms” as common in the UK and Australia as it is in the US? If not, is there a different default term than “Ms”?
Well, there’s always the archaic “doña” which would be destined to females of the higher classes.
In Spain you mostly wouldn’t address anybody with any honorific, unless they were of a certain age or you perceived them to be conservative enough to want that. I understand that certain parts of South America are sticklers for academic titles, adressing people in completely casual conversations as “Doctor” or “Licenciado”
Archaic? I was taught in conversational Spanish in the late 60’s and early 70’s that don and doña were in current use as titles of respect for any elders, not just upper class.
An interesting note. I have been going to the same laundry place for over three years. When I first went there, they asked for my name. I told them Francisco. Now, everyone knows me and they don’t ask my name. The last time I picked up my clothes, I noticed that they had written “don Panchito” on my package. Well, they would never call me Panchito (the diminutive for Francisco) without me offering it. So, they write don Panchito with respect. I am not upper class, but I am their elder.
Yea, don and doña are also use in Puerto Rico for the elders, especially if they have no other title or if they’re in situations where they don’t use/want to use the title. I use it when I encounter elders!
It seems the use of señorita vs señora to call an unknown (to the speaker) woman varies by region/country. In some, I’ve heard señorita, in others, señora, without distinguishing between the ages of the women. Hence in some countries all unknown women are called señorita until marital status is known or real old age kicks in, when then it changes to señora and doña, respectively. In others, they use señora until the same conditions apply, and then make the switch.
And of course, if the title of the woman is known, then that is how she must be addressed and introduced as, unless she rejects it.
Or to refer to women in royalty. Infantas, princesses and queens are “doñas”: Check out these two “doñas”.
As **KarlGrenze **mentions, don/doña is the default for an elder in Puerto Rico. Señora/Señorita is sort of in flux, mostly if it’s an adult woman in any sort of position of responsibility she often gets addressed as “señora” regardless of the social protocol. One thing that has been getting more frequent when addressing unknown persons has been to refer to young people of either gender as “joven” (“young person”), and to clearly adult people as “caballero” o “dama” (“gentleman” or “lady”).
And yes, the culture here shares the Latin American tendency towards a multiplicity of professional titles or ranks (other than doctor and professor) getting stuck in front of your name and being used by themselves as your short-form address (though not as excruciatingly as some of our continental brethren). So a female lawyer (or pharmacist or medical technologist), if you know she is one, can be addressed as just “la licenciada”.
And in Costa Rica both for older people and for managers. My team of Spaniards had the curious situation that on one hand, we’d use usted as the respectful you whereas the locals reserved it for misbehaving children (a usage which exists in Spain as well), and on the other we were doña Nava, don Jaime, don Antonio… being considered the social/organizational equal of the department directors don Mateo, don Uriel…
In theory, anybody who’s got a bachillerato (a HS degree) gets the don/doña automatically, as well as those who have it by birth. And while in Spain they don’t get much mileage in oral language, in writing they do.
Again in Spain, addressing people you don’t know as señor/señora or even trying to gauge whether it should be señorita instead is pretty normal. Señorito is directly an insult; women of my generation (I’m 46) normally don’t mind about the civil-status differentiation, but those my mother’s age usually still do - if someone my mother’s age is a señorita, it usually means she’s either a teacher (they’d get called señorita despite of civil status, now some prefer señora or “just call me Ana”) or an unmarried woman who worked in another well-respected profession her whole life and who didn’t get married cos she didn’t wanna so there, not because she couldn’t. It carries specific connotations which won’t be explained in a dictionary.
A detail which may be important is that AFAIK Sr Siete is male, whereas I’m female: the señor/señora is implicit in the usted, but more likely to be made explicit for women. Children and very old people are those more likely to actually say señor while adressing a male as usted, a word which is also rarely said since it’s implicit in the verbal form (we just like “impliciting” things, in Spanish). And of course, as in that coworker from Dos Hermanas who liked going to Bilbao because waiters there adressed him as “the gentleman”, some people look more señor-appropriate than others (the same waiters called me “cutie”, we were the same age but I wore jeans and a long-sleeved tee while he wore a suit and a camelhair coat; he got dígame el caballero, I got ¿qué te pongo, chata?).
[yes, I know y’all are talking 'bout Spanish, but…]
This is one of the tricky things I never feel comfortable with in Brazil. I used to hear the women coming by and calling out for my mother-in-law as dona + first name, as in “Dona Maria! Are you there?”
But I never really know how to properly use this construction.
Another weird thing they do is refer to elders in the third person: “A senhora está bem?” (My wife says this to her aunt. Sounds to me like “Is madam well?”). That’s another one I just don’t know how to properly apply. So I never use those forms, probably sliding by on the gringo excuse.
ETA: It occurs to me that these forms are fading, just as “Mr. Smith” spoken by children in the USA is fading. These days it is common for children to refer to parents’ friends by first name, and my wife says that the more formal addresses are less common in this generation in Brazil.
In Guatemala, “Don” and “Dona” are still used, but I’ve only seen it with elderly patriarchs/matriarchs of the family. I am unmarried, and was called señorita until I hit about 35, and since then I’ve been called señora. Even those who know I’m unmarried will now refer to me as señora because I’m forty five and at that age, I think it becomes more respectful to say señora even if they know I’m unmarried. There is something about calling a middle aged or elderly woman señorita that seems somewhat patronizing or infantilizing. An exception might be a devoutly religious, unmarried woman who has made a point of publicly maintaining her image as a virgin (still living with her parents, never dating)- then I guess it would be appropriate to say señorita regardless of age. But once you’ve lived with a man, or had children, even if you’ve never married, you become a señora. And if it’s a stranger and you don’t know marital status or motherhood status, then it goes by age- young is señorita, middle age and higher is señora.
As far as I know, it’s culturally considered at the very least slightly despective everywhere in Spain, as Nava said. It’s the equivalent of calling somebody “little mister” in western English, something you would call an unruly child you are scolding.
When talking about an adult, señorito is more like “pampered little brat of a leech”. The señorito, sometimes señorito andaluz, is a little bitch of a young man who hasn’t worked a single honest minute in his whole life, has always ridden on Daddy’s money and power, and expects women (or, if that happens to be his preference, men) to faint at his feet with their legs open.
I was taught in conversational Spanish in the late 60’s and early 70’s that don and doña were in current use as titles of respect for any elders, not just upper class.