Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
213,483
edits
Fantastic Honorifics: Difference between revisions
no edit summary
m (update links) |
No edit summary |
||
| (5 intermediate revisions by 4 users not shown) | |||
Line 2:
Many cultures have extremely detailed systems of titles and honorifics, denoting who is speaking to who, what their respective ranks are, and a thousand other factors. Writers often find these are too dull to use in their works (or maybe they just need an honorific for wizards), so they make their own.
See also [[Hold Your Hippogriffs]]. Closely related to [[Fantastic Rank System]], and not to be confused with [[
----
{{examples}}
== Ser ==
Interestingly, the phrase "ser" is a very common stock fantastic honorific, often gender-neutral.
=== [[Literature]] ===
* "Ser" as a gender-neutral form of "Sir" is used in several of L. E. Modesitt, Jr.'s novels.
* "Ser" is used as the equivalent of "Mister" in Frank Herbert's [[Con Sentiency]] stories.
* "Ser" is also used (in the same way, gender-neutral form of "sir") in the ''[[Uplift]]'' series by [[David Brin]].
* "Ser" is directly equivalent to "Sir" in [[A Song of Ice and Fire]], being most frequently applied to knights.
* A short story by Stephen R. Donaldson was "Ser Visal's Tale," in which the title character told some college students the facts behind a mysterious occurrence at a recent [[Burn the Witch|witchcraft trial]]. {{Spoiler|Including that he knew these facts because he'd '''helped''' the accused and her rescuer escape.}}
* [[C. J. Cherryh]]'s ''[[Alliance Union|Merovingen Nights]]'' [[Shared World]] series has the polite addresses "m'ser" for males and "m'sera" for females. It helps establish Anastasi Kalugin as [[Faux Affably Evil]] when he, [[Blue Blood|younger son of the city's ruler]], repeatedly addresses [[Wrong Side of the Tracks|lower-class]] heroine Altair Jones as "m'sera."
=== [[Video Games]] ===
* "Ser" also appears as a title in ''Privateer 2: The Darkening'', first used to refer to the main character of Ser Lev Arris ([[Retroactive Recognition|played by]] [[Clive Owen]] before he became famous years later). The same game featured "Sera" as a feminized version of the title for women.
* The Dunmer use a system of honorifics in ''[[The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind]]''. They are "sera", "muthsera" and "serjo", in increasing order of politeness.
* In ''[[Dragon Age II]]'', ''Serah'' is used for addressing someone of equal or lower status. ''Messere'' is the proper way to address someone of higher status.
** In the first game, "Ser" is a gender-neutral title for a Ferelden knight. At one point in the game a servant addresses The Warden as "ser", so it may also be a general term of respect.
== [[Fan Works]] ==
* ''[[Undocumented Features]]'' uses "Kahm" and "Darth" as titles for female and male Sith respectively. However, there's a certain amount of playing with the trope here, as it turns out both were actually the ''given names'' of the oldest known Dark-side Force users in history, and have been ''misconstrued'' as titles by later Sith followers for thousands of years. (This is probably a nod to the inconsistent use of "Darth" in the original ''[[Star Wars]]'' -- see the note in the example for those films below.)
== [[Film]] ==
* ''[[Star Wars]]'' gave us the Grand Moffs, military governors over vast regions of galactic space, and the Darths, the title held by Sith Lords. Also Padawan, the title of a Jedi apprentice. (However, in Episode IV, Obi-Wan clearly uses "Darth" as a ''given name'' several times, employing it in ways and at times where it would be clumsy or inappropriate were it a title; it appears that its use as an honorific is a [[Retcon]] of sorts.)
== [[Literature]] ==
Line 29 ⟶ 33:
* The ''[[Inheritance Cycle]]'' had honorifics in the Ancient language that came after a person's name, such as -elda, -finiarel, -svitkona, and the like.
* 'Sai' in [[The Dark Tower]] serves as both sir/ma'am and Mr./Mrs.
* In the [[Vorkosigan Saga]], "Vor" is a prefix denoting a family belonging to the Barrayan hereditary military caste. Aristocracy by any other name ...
** Also the Cetagandan ''haut''-lords and ''ghem''-soldiers.
* The ''[[Rod Albright Alien Adventures]]'' has Tar Gibbons, the alien equivalent of an [[Old Master]]. As he explains, the term Tar is an honorific, meaning [[Translation: "Yes"|approximately]] "Wise and beloved master who could kill me with his little finger if he so wished."
* In the last book of the ''[[Heralds of Valdemar|Mage Storms]]'' trilogy, the Eastern Empire uses "Siara" as a default I-don't-know-your-proper-honorific.
* ''[[The Keys to The Kingdom]]'' has a few of these.
* ''[[The Long Price Quartet]]'' has a number of fake Japanese-style honorifics.
* M. is used for all adult humans in the Hyperion Cantos. Androids are adressed as A.
Line 45 ⟶ 49:
* The ''[[Dune]]'' series of books has the military rank of Bashar, roughly equivilant to some sort of [[Four-Star Badass|General,]] used by various different military forces over the course of the books.
* In the [[Wheel of Time]] series Aes Sedai always have "Sedai" fixed onto the ends of their names after being raised to the shawl, since "Aes Sedai" roughly translates to "Servants Of All" the honorfic most likely translate to "Moraine The Servant" or something similar.
* The the [[World of Warcraft]] novel
* Marie Brennan's ''[[Doppelganger (novel)|Doppelganger]]'' series has ''sixteen'' different honorifics for the various classes of witches in the story. "Katsu" is a generic term; the others are based on a witch's rank and area of specialization.
* In the [[New Jedi Order]], there are several examples among the Yuuzhan Vong, notably "Fearsome One" (used for high-ranking members of the warrior caste such as the Warmaster and his Supreme Commanders), "Eminence" (for priests) and "Dread Lord" (for [[God-Emperor|the Supreme Overlord]]). The prefix "Yun-" is also added to the names of deities, though it's never used for mortal characters.
* The original [[Planet of the Apes]] novel had a mention of "Mai" as an honorific-Uylsses uses it on Zaius when he's trying to learn the language. It's not in the movies, though.
* In [[Tamora Pierce|Tamora Pierce's]] ''[[Circle of Magic|The Circle Opens]]'' quartet, every new country the characters visit has its own system of Fantastic Honorifics, with variations appropriate to each culture. All of them seem to have a special honorific for mages, which is usually gender-neutral, even when no gender-neutral honorifics are used for non-mages.
* In Diane Duane's ''[[Young Wizards]]'' series, wizards are formally addressed as "Emissary", presumably in reference to their status as mortal agents of the divine [[Powers That Be]]. It is traditional for wizards to address each other as "cousin" and any of the aforementioned Powers that they might speak to personally as "elder sister/brother".
* In [[Star Trek:
== [[Live
* ''[[Babylon 5]]'' has the Minbari title of "Satai", for members of their inner governing circle, the Grey Council.
* The ''[[Doctor Who]]'' serial "The Caves of Andrizoni" has "Trau" (Mr) and "Krau" (Ms). This was later taken up by the [[Virgin New Adventures]] set in the future.
Line 67 ⟶ 70:
{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
▲[[Category:Fantastic Honorifics]]
| |||