Courtesy title

A courtesy title is a title that does not have legal significance but rather is used through custom or courtesy, particularly, in the context of nobility, the titles used by children of members of the nobility (c.f. substantive title).

In some contexts, courtesy title is used to mean the more general concept of a title or honorific such as Mr., Mrs., Ms., Dr., Miss, Sir, and Madam.

In much of Africa, many of the surviving noble titles are social courtesies that are recognized by customary law and little else. Even in states like Ghana and Nigeria, where the chiefdoms of the various tribes are either constitutionally or legally defined entities, only the titles of the dynastic monarchs like the members of the Ghanaian House of Chiefs and the Nigerian traditional rulers are substantive, while the pre-nominals Nana and that a great many of their traditional notables bear exist as communally ascribed honorifics with little legal significance.

In France, for example, many titles are not substantive titles but titres de courtoisie, adopted unilaterally. When done by a genuine member of the noblesse d'épée the custom was tolerated in French society. A common practice is title declension, when cadet males of noble families, especially landed aristocracy, may assume a lower courtesy title than that legally borne by the head of their family, even though lacking a titled seigneury themselves. For example, the eldest son of the Duke of Paris (substantive title) may be called Marquis de Paris (courtesy title) and younger sons Count N. of Paris, where N. stands for the first name. In the hereditary Napoleonic and Restoration peerage, declension was a legal right of younger sons, the derivative title being heritable by male primogeniture.

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