Last name, Master

   Formerly a manner of addressing men of high social rank or learning, especially those who held the academic title of Master of Arts. In Shakespeare’s plays, those men addressed in this way are also called ‘Sir’, and we have contemporary evidence that the term was a serious indication of respect. In The Witch of Edmonton, by Rowley, Dekker, and Ford, Thomey says: You offer, Master Carter, like a gentleman; I cannot find fault with it, ‘tis so fair.’ Carter replies: ‘No gentleman I, Master Thorney. Spare the mastership; call me by my name, John Carter. “Master” is a title my father nor his before him were acquainted with. Such an one am I.’ Shakespeare often has characters addressed as ‘Master’ + last name, though he is also fond of using ‘Master’ as a prefixed title before the name of a profession, to give: Master School-master, Master Constable, Master Steward, Master Tapster, Master Doctor, etc. Some of these terms show ‘Master’ beginning to become less seriously respectful and perhaps instead merely conventional. This process was to continue with ‘Mister’, which replaced ‘Master’ in the uses so far quoted by the eighteenth century. Meanwhile the use of ‘young master’. ‘little master’ to the sons of gentlemen led eventually to ‘Master’ becoming associated with youths, while ‘Mister’ became the adult term.

   Until recently ‘Master’ + first name was usual for boys of good families when being addressed by those lower down the social scale. ‘Master’ + last name was also used. In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, for instance, the ten-year-old Jane asks John Reed, aged fourteen: What do you want?’ ‘Say “What do you want, Master Reed”’ he instructs her, reminding her that she is a family dependent. A better known literary youth is Charley Bates, in Dickens’s Oliver Twist, whom the author unfortunately refers to constantly as Master Bates. Dickens clearly did not see the pun, though he created a merry character who would no doubt have enjoyed the joke.