The normal reason for wanting this "title" is to address letters by surname to make
them sound more formal. A bank I worked for had a dropdown list of 20 or so to choose
from including "sargent", "captain", "reverand", "pastor", "sister", "mother superior"
etc.
My ex-wife had an interesting view of titles. At one stage here it was fashionable to
refer to women as "Mizz" or "Mz.". My ex hated the word as she associated it with
uptight obnoxious people and told people off for calling her Mz. anything.
Personally, the mental image conjured up for me by the word Mizz is somebody haughtily
correcting you with
"that's Mizz! whoever". It cut about as much ice as "thats Doctor! whoever". My
immediate and unconcious response was always to be obsequious and switch off. I've
never encountered this in a private setting, only in business.
Curiously, I've never been corrected with "thats Doctor! whoever" by anyone who's a
doctor of something useful (medicine, hard sciences, engineering). Also I've never
been corrected with "I'd prefer to be called doctor if you don't mind" or "I'd prefer
Mz. if you don't mind". This leads me to speculate that the mindsets of the title
obsessed individuals I've encountered is similar.
The diminutive of Mister is Master, but AFAIK it's not in common usage and is age
centric. While Miss is the diminutive of Mrs. (can't spell the full version), the
cutover point has traditionally been marriage not age.
Now that it's not uncommon for women to retain their surnames after getting married (
well, here anyway ), I suppose you could just as well use either honourific
irrespective of marital status. If one of the two were picked and applied universally,
the other would presumably fall out of use. Of the two, I suspect Ms would be the more
popular. I think that if language modification is desired, then the power of laziness
needs to be employed (ie. make the decision you want the one that takes no effort to
make). This means that a new word is out of the question. You have to change the
meaning of one that's already in use. This happens all the time, and sometimes not in
good ways. What is the original meaning of the word "gay"? How many people use it to
mean that now? I see this as a case in which women as a group have the power to make
this change simply because, they're the ones answering the questions. Like most
statistically associated groups however, it's not that simple. There are some women (a
minority among those I've met) who like the fact that the title 'Mrs.' states that they
have a husband. The reasoning explained to me is "I love my husband and I want to tell
the world".
A (rather pretty) single female friend who travelled a lot would put a plain ring on
her left ring finger and list herself as Mrs so that she didn't get hit on all the
time. A seventies (I think) movie called "Confessions of a Driving Instructor" has a
scene in which two male driving instructors are splitting up the client load for the
day. They have two clients, Ms x and Mrs y. The senior of the two instructors elects
to take Ms x on the assumption that she'll be young and pretty. It turns out that Ms x
is an archetypal geriatric and Mrs y is a young, pretty and adulterous individual. To
me, this shows a stereotype of Ms=available, Mrs=taken. Desirable=taken seems to be a
far more realistic assessment (for both genders) :) That said, I'm in a relationship,
so undesirable=taken could also be true :)
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