Dames! I’ll tell ya.
Not to mention the droit du seigneur!
Military ranks precede kinghthoods or peerage titles. I think they even precede royal titles (ie Captain His Royal Highness Prince Henry of Wales, though as a practical matter he get’s called Captain Wales on a working basis).
i thought only englishmen may be addressed ‘sir?’
Yes - as others have noted, that’s legitimate. But you wouldn’t address him as “Sir General”; either “General Goodbody”, or “Sir Arthur”.
If someone is a British citizen (whether or not they also have another nationality) then they can receive a full knighthood and be addressed as “sir” or “dame”.
Do you similarly show respect by refusing to address doctors, professors, clergymen and so on by their customary honorifics? All men are created equal, but many achieve distinction through their own efforts and are recognised for such.
One could take the view that some such titles don’t imply an inequality in social rank, but are rather purely descriptive forms used when addressing people of certain (arbitrarily chosen) occupations, much the same way that some languages (again entirely arbitrarily) make a distinction in forms of address for men and women. Under this interpretation (which I hasten to mention I do not necessarily subscribe to), however, most or all clerical, judicial, and diplomatic titles are out, since the superiority embodied in them is quite transparent. I don’t care how socially distinguished a particular cleric may be; I don’t subscribe to his religion so I am not going to address him as “Your Worship”, “Your Excellency”, “Reverend”, or even “Father”.
Recognized by whom? We all reserve the right to recognize distinctions for ourselves (or to delegate such recognition to some trusted third party). For example, you may be comfortable addressing a Harvard PhD as “doctor”, but would you do the same for someone who received his degree from a diploma mill? If not, where do you draw the line on the continuum of academic excellence, both for institutions and their graduates? Do you give equal credence to all religious titles, or are there some religions whose leaders you will not dignify with such respect? For example, you might address the pope in the Vatican as “Your Holiness”, but would you do the same for, say, the dozen or so current antipopes who lead tiny breakaway Catholic sects?
too bad this is in the factual realm. i have a problem with your examples: harvard as against a “diploma mill?” the pope vs the head of a breakaway sect? imagine yourself just at the onset of the US revolution, or maybe he onset of the english civil war.
You’re missing the point, which is that there is always a continuum between such extremes, and while it’s easy to discount those at the very fringes, it’s not always clear where the fringe actually begins. On the one hand you have well-established and -respected churches, on the other tiny extremist sects, and between them a whole swath of institutions of wildly varying sizes and respectability. How do you decide whose honorifics to pay your lip service to? For you, the sedevacantists might be obviously out, but what about the much larger and long-established but still fringe ultrajectine Catholics? What about the LDS Church? The Moonies? The Scientologists? What’s your criteria for inclusion and exclusion?
I call them by their names, just like I would with any other human. It works just fine.
The discussion is amusing for me since IME Americans are far far more conscious of titles then any European.
I think if you’re talking to this knight, the correct form of address is… somewhat different.
Something along the lines of ‘Awwwww!! Whosaliddlecutieden?!’ is generally considered acceptable, and I’m not sure he can read, so the letters thing is a bit irrelevant.
Yeah, a lot of Europeans don’t really take the whole knighthood thing all that seriously.
Boy, ain’t that the case.
As I was given to understand it (a million years ago by State Dept weenies) the issue with addressing members of the peerage (and your various Sirs and Dames) by their title originally came down to this:
By accepting their title a citizen of the United States is acknowledging the existence of the sovereign and the US citizen’s deference to that sovereign. So by doing so one would be saying “I accept your rank and your place of authority” where none should exist for a US citizen.
Now, that’s crap, of course. Governmental officials use ranks and such of all sorts because, as can usually be the case, "Fuck it, lives to short to piss people off over little things.’ Toss in that the US and the Brits have a longstanding and overwhelmingly positive relationship and the whole thing just skates in the interest of getting along.
The above is anecdotal and from memory, believe me, but I got it from members of the US Foreign Service and Protocol people while I worked over there in my youth.
I just want to say that I saw this whole debate coming from the moment I read the title.
Taylor was a British citizen. Poiteir has Bahamanian citizenship (the Queen of the UK is also Queen of the Bahamas). As long as one is a citizen of one of the 15 countries that share the monarch with the UK one can get a full knighthood.
when you say a “full knighthood,” i take it you mean he is to be addressed as ‘sir.’ naturally, gen. h. n. swartzkoph cannot be adressed as such, being an american. same with bob geldolf, being irish. but you’re saying anyone, whether english, welsh, scot or northern irish may enjoy the title and courtesy? what about citizens in commonwealth nations?
So, the queen can bestow honorary knighthood on whomever she wishes. Her not being the head of state in the US is immaterial, because the US does not have knighthoods.
I still say you can always address a make citizen of the US as ‘Mister’.
Yes. If the Queen is the Head of State, she can make her subjects into knights. I cant actually find a link which says ‘yes, knighthoods are for commonwealth citizens too.’ But here, for example, if a list of honours handed out to commonwealth citizens, including knighthoods. If they were honourary knighthoods it would say so.
Well, it’s not immaterial - the reason the US doesn’t have knighthoods is that they don’t have a monarchy and chose not to retain a system that awards knighthoods.
You can’t always address some as mister same as you can’t always address someone by their first name, even though you can most of the time; it depends on context. Meeting a knight down the pub would be rather different to meeting a knight at an embassy ball.
A number of the Commonwealth realms have their own orders which may or may not include knighthoods. Australia for instance does not have knighthoods in the Order of Australia but New Zealand does in the Order of New Zealand.
The list given in SciFiSam’s post applies to those Commonwealth countries that do not have their own orders but still award titles from the UK orders.
Each realm may award honours in their own order according to the rules that the realm may have. For NZ, that includes honorary titles to citizens of other countries. The honorary title does not permit the recipient to title him/her self as Sir John Doe/Dame Jane Doe.