How did realtors convince everyone that they are actually “Realtors”? As far as I’m aware, we don’t treat any other professionals (doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc.) as worthy of proper nouns. And, no offense to realtors, but they hardly seem like the most likely candidates for such an honorific.
Real estate brokers who are member of the National Association of Realtors, who coined the term realtor in 1916 and patented it in 1949, are the only people legally entitled to call themselves Realtors… Just as anyone selling ice cream from a push cart cannot call himself a Good Humor Man. The word “realtor” is not valid in Scrabble, because it is recognized as a trade name.
A trade name only–huh.
I wonder how long that will last.
100 years and counting.
Prior to retiring the NAR was a client… As supplier, and it you valued he relationship, you pronounced the name correctly.
We don’t have them over here - we call them Estate Agents. Properly they are Real Estate Agents but the ‘real’ got dropped somewhere. They are considered only slightly more honest and trustworthy than politicians and bankers.
Many refer to them as Realators.
Registered trademark, not patent.
Nitpick: they were never “real estate agents” in BrE; they were estate agents or land agents, and their role was to manage a landowner’s landed estate - collecting rents, inspecting properties, negotating renewals of leases, dealing with tenants, that kind of thing, on behalf of the landlord. They would also act in the sale of land out of a larger estate, or in the sale of an entire estate, when that arose. In the late nineteenth century they moved increasingly into the business of acting in the sale of land, responding to the decline of the landed estates, and the rise of home ownership.
“Real estate”, as distinct from personal estate, was a term used by lawyers. It became attached to the estate agency profession in the 19th century in AmE, but never really in BrE.
In the U.S.,
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All Realtors are real estate agents.
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Not all real estate agents are Realtors.
So it is best to use the generic term “real estate agent” rather than “Realtor.”
Like nearly everyone I’ve ever heard say the word. I was in my early thirties before I heard someone say real-tor and I wondered why they were saying it that way. It still sounds ridiculous to me.
Drives me batsh!t. I proofread something for someone where she spelled it “realitor,” in the same paper where she spelled liaison, convalesce, cauliflower, fuchsia, and turmeric all correctly. The mind boggles.
ETA: My mother, who is a linguist, tried to explain to me that to pronounced vowels in a row are unusual in English, so words that have then tend to get mispronounced: “Realitor,” “Vetiman,” “Nucular,” “Rooned” (for ruined). Probably why Sarah Palin says “dill” when she means “deal.”
It’s worse than that. It’s not Realtor, it’s REALTOR®
Trademark or no, it seems pompous to me. Brag about your membership in the National Association of Realtors if you must, but expecting capitalization of your job title (if it doesn’t actually precede your name, like “Judge Smith,” “Doctor Jones” or “President Obama”) is just annoying.
Sometimes a brand is too successful for its owner’s good. It has very little to do with the brand’s worthiness. It’s not like Q-Tip brand cotton swabs were so great and wonderful that we bestowed that name on all cotton swabs as an honor. It just…happened.
If my real estate agent is not a Realtor, should I even care?
It seems synthetic and clumsy, which is a bit of a clue that it’s a trademark.
The -or suffix is usually used to construct an agent noun out of a verb:
An actor acts
An assessor assesses
A doctor teaches (originally)
A professor professes (originally)
A conqueror conquers
An administrator administers
An auditor audits
This pattern holds good even where it’s not obvious. An author initiates things or sets things in motion, from the latin augere. (“Inaugurate” is related.) A rector rules. A tutor watches over someone (from tueri, to guard). A pastor feeds or gives pasture.
And so forth. But a realtor . . . reals? Realts? Realises? The Latin root is res, which is not a verb, or a word suggestive of action of any kind. It means “thing”, which is about as inert a meaning as you could find.
So “realtor” looks like something put together by somebody who wants to sound vaguely official but has absolutely no feel for language.
So if you wanted an Anglo-Saxon derivative, you’d call them a “thingmonger”.
Sounds about right.
I call 'em real estate agents or sleazebags, depending on mood and context. The term “Realtor” is used because of aggressive marketing by their lobby, reinforced by newspapers who needed the advertising money and wouldn’t have dreamed of offending the real estate people.
Agreed. Protectionist crap like this (another example is the insistence of marketers that “Champagne” be capitalized and used only to describe the output of a particular wine region) should be mocked.