An honorific is a title that conveys esteem, courtesy, or respect for position or rank when used in addressing or referring to a person. It is also often conflated with systems of honorific speech in linguistics, which are grammatical or morphological ways of encoding the relative social status of speakers. Honorifics can be used as prefixes or suffixes depending on the appropriate occasion and presentation in accordance with style and customs. Sometimes, the term "honorific" is used in a more specific sense, to refer to an honorary academic title.
Typically, honorifics are used as a style in the grammatical third person (e.g., His Holiness), and as a form of address in the second person (e.g., Your Majesty). Some languages have anti-honorific (despective or humilific) first person forms (expressions such as "your most humble servant" or "this unworthy person") whose effect is to enhance the relative honor accorded to the person addressed; these are nowadays used only in formal written correspondence.
Modern English honorifics
The most common honorifics in modern English are usually placed immediately before a person's name. Honorifics used (both as style and as form of address) include, in the case of a man, "Mr." (irrespective of marital status), and, in the case of a woman, previously either of two depending on marital status: "Miss" if unmarried and "Mrs." if married, widowed, or divorced; more recently, a third, "Ms.", became the more prevalent norm, mainly owing to the desire to avoid identifying women by their marital status. Further considerations regarding identifying people by gender currently are raised with varying prevalence and details; in some environments, honorifics such as Mx., Ind. or Misc. may be used so as not to identify people by gender. In some environments, the honorific "Mstr." may be used for a boy who has not yet entered adult society; similar to this, "Miss" may be considered appropriate for a girl but inappropriate for a woman (but unless parallel to "Mstr." the reasoning is not explicit). All the above terms but "Miss" are written as abbreviations—most were originally abbreviations (e.g., from "Mister", "Mistress"), others may be considered as coined to directly parallel them for consistency. Abbreviations that include the initial and final letters (a type of contraction) are typically written in most English dialects (modern U.K. English, Australian English, South African English, amongst many others) without full stops (periods), but in U.S. English and Canadian English the period is often still used.
Other honorifics may denote the honored person's occupation, for instance "Doctor" (Dr), "Esquire" (Esq, as a post nominal), "Captain", "Coach", "Officer", "The Reverend" (The Rev) (for some Christian clergy) or "Father" (Fr) (for a Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, or Anglican Christian priest), "Rabbi" (for certain Jewish clergy), or Professor.
Holders of an academic doctorate, such as a Ph.D., are addressed as "Doctor" (abbreviated Dr).
Some honorifics act as complete replacements for a name, as "Sir" or "Ma'am", or "Your Honour/Honor". Subordinates will often use honorifics as punctuation before asking a superior a question or after responding to an order: "Yes, sir" or even "Sir, yes, sir."
Similarly, a monarch ranking as a king/queen or emperor and his/her consort may be addressed as "Your Majesty", or referred to as "His/Her Majesty", "Their Majesties", etc. Note, however, that there is no customary honorific accorded to a female monarch's consort, as he is usually granted a specific style (eg His Royal Highness, Prince Philip). Monarchs below kingly rank are addressed as "Your/His/Her Highness", the exact rank being indicated by an appropriate modifier, e.g. "His Serene Highness" for a member of a princely dynasty, or "Her Grand Ducal Highness" for a member of a family that reigns over a grand duchy. Verbs with these honorifics as subject are conjugated in the third person (e.g. "you are going" vs. "Your Honour is going" or "Her Royal Highness is going".) Protocol for monarchs and aristocrats can be very complex, with no general rules — and offence can be caused by using a form that is not exactly correct. There are differences between "Your Highness" and "Your Royal Highness"; between "Princess Margaret" and "The Princess Margaret". All these are correct, but apply to people of subtly different rank. An example of a non-obvious style is "Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother", which was an official style, but unique to one person.
Occupants of state and political office may be addressed with an honorific. A president may be addressed as Your Excellency or Mr/Madam President, a minister or secretary of state as "Your Excellency", "Minister", or Mr/Madam Secretary, etc. A prime minister may be addressed as "the Honorable" or "Prime Minister". In the UK, members of the Privy Council are addressed as "the Right Honourable...". A member of Parliament or other legislative body may have particular honorifics: a member of a lower house is typically described member of a Senate, for example, may be addressed as "Senator". The etiquette varies and most countries have protocol specifying the honorifics to be used for its state, judicial, military and other officeholders.
Judges are often addressed as "Your Honour/Honor" when on the bench, the plural form is "Your Honours" and the style is "His/Her Honour". If the judge has a higher title, that may be the correct honorific to use, for example, for High Court Judges in England: "Your Lordship" or "My Lord". Members of the U.S. Supreme Court (as well as some state-level appellate judges) are addressed as "Justice".
In music, a distinguished conductor or virtuoso instrumentalist may be known as "Maestro".
In aviation, pilots in command of a larger civil aircraft are usually addressed as "Captain" plus their full name or surname. This tradition is slowly diminishing in the United States and most European Union countries. However, many countries, especially in Asia, follow this tradition and address airline pilots, military pilots, and flight instructors exclusively as "Captain" even outside of the professional environment. In addition, such countries' etiquette rules dictate that this title must be placed on all the official letters and social invitations, business cards, identification documents, etc. In the U.S., when addressing a pilot, common etiquette does not require the title "Captain" to be printed on official letters or invitations before the addressee's full name. However, this is optional (akin to "Esq." after an attorney's name, in the U.S.) and may be used where appropriate, especially when addressing airline pilots with many years of experience.
Former military officers are sometimes addressed by their last military rank, such as "Admiral", "Colonel", "General", etc. This is generally adopted only by those officers who served and at least obtained the rank equivalency of Major. In the U.S., veterans of all ranks who have served during wartime and were honorably discharged may 'bear the title' of the highest rank held, as codified in law, 10 USC 772e, both officer and enlisted. When such ranks are used in writing, the post-nominal "(Ret'd)" (a shortening of retired) is also added following the surname.
Examples
Your Highness Your Holiness Your Honor Your Grace Your Lordship Your Majesty Your Worship
Honorifics in other languages and cultures Culturally specific usage Australian honorifics Canadian honorifics Chinese honorifics Filipino honorifics French honorifics German honorifics Honorifics in Judaism Indian honorifics Islamic honorifics Japanese honorifics Korean honorifics Kunya (Arabic) Thai royal ranks and titles Vietnamese honorifics
Africa
In areas of East Africa where the Bantu language Swahili is spoken, mzee is frequently used for an elder to denote respect by younger speakers. It is used in direct conversation and used in referring to someone in the third person. Other honorifics include mukubwa (for ministers, employers, and authorities), dada/kaka (for peers, friends, colleagues), and mama/baba (for parents and grandparents). Additionally, some Arabic loanwords are used in coastal regions as honorifics, too, such as ami (paternal uncle) and haloo (maternal aunt), the familial roles for which are more often described elsewhere in the Swahili-speaking world as baba mkubwa/mdogo (older/younger father) or mama mkubwa/mdogo (older/younger mother). Furthermore, parents are oftentimes addressed by a combination of their parental title and the name of a child, e.g. Baba Zekiyah refers to the father of Zekiyah. While Swahili is Bantu, it is highly influenced by Arabic and Hindi languages and cultures. Babu is a prefix honorific used with elders, similar to mzee, but may also mean grandfather. Other prefix honorifics are ndugu, for brother or a close male friend, and dada for a sister or close female friend; thus, John and Jane would be Ndugu John and Dada Jane, respectively.
Amongst the Akan ethnic groups of West Africa's Ghana, the word nana is used as an aristocratic pre-nominal by chiefs and elders alike.
In Yorubaland, also in West Africa, the word ogbeni is used as a synonym for the English "mister". Titled members of the region's aristocracy are therefore called oloye instead, this being the word for "chief". Although the former of the two titles is only used by men, aristocrats of either gender are addressed using the latter of them.
Europe and former European colonies Ancient Rome
Some honorifics used by Ancient Romans, such as Augustus, turned into titles over time.
Italy
Italian honorifics are usually limited to formal situations. Professional titles like (engineer) are often substituted for the ordinary / (mister or Mrs.), while or (doctor) is used freely for any graduate of a university. For college professors on academic settings, the honorifics or prevail over or . Masculine honorifics lose their ending when juxtaposed to a surname: e.g., , , . Verbs are conjugated in the third person singular (as opposed to the second person singular) when addressing someone using an honorific and the formal pronoun (with a capital ) is used instead of the informal .
For members of the clergy and historically also for any member of low nobility, (feminine ) followed by given name is the usual form of address (similar to how English would say Father John for a priest or Sir James for a petty noble). This in turn gave rise to the address of mafia gangsters as followed by either the given name or the family name as a sign of utmost reverence.
Spanish-speaking cultures
Spanish has a number of honorific forms that may be used with or as substitutes for names, such as señor or caballero ("Mr.", "Sir", "Gentleman"); señora ("Madam", "Mrs.", "Lady", "ma'am") and señorita ("Miss", "young lady"); licenciado for a person with bachelor's or a professional degree (e.g., attorneys and engineers); maestro for a teacher, master mechanic, or person with a master's degree; doctor ("doctor"); etc. Also used is don (male) or doña (female) for people of rank or, in some Latin American countries (e.g., Puerto Rico), for any senior citizen. In some Latin American countries, like Colombia, "Doctor" is used for any respected figure regardless of whether they have a doctoral degree (for instance Colombian presidents are often referred to as Doctor ___); likewise "Maestro" is used for artistic masters, especially painters.