Information about Nobility

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Nobility is a government-privileged title which may be either hereditary (see hereditary titles) or for a lifetime. Titles of nobility exist today in many countries although it is usually associated with present or former monarchies. The term originally referred to those who were "known" or "notable" and was applied to the highest social class in pre-modern societies. In the feudal system (in Europe and elsewhere), the nobility were generally those who held a fief, often land and/or office, under vassalage, i.e. in exchange for allegiance and various, mainly military, services to the Monarch and at lower levels to another nobleman. It rapidly came to be seen as a hereditary caste, sometimes associated with a right to bear a hereditary title and, for example in pre-revolutionary France, enjoying fiscal and other privileges. Today, in most countries, "noble status" is a purely honorary dignity that confers no legal privileges; an important exception is the United Kingdom, where certain titles (titles of the peerage, until recently guaranteeing a seat in the Upper House of the UK Parliament, hence its name House of Lords), still confer some residual privileges.

Nobility is a historical, social and often legal notion, which should not be confused with socio-economic status which is mainly statistical based on income and possessions. Being wealthy or influential does not automatically make one a noble, nor are all nobles wealthy and influential (aristocratic families have lost their fortunes in various ways, and the concept of the 'poor nobleman' is almost as old as nobility itself).

Countries without a feudal tradition do not have a nobility as such; various republics, including and Italy have expressly abolished titles of nobility. Although many such societies have a privileged 'upper class' with great wealth and power, this does not entail a separate legal status, or different forms of address.

Western nobility

European nobility originated from the feudal/seignorial system that arose in Europe during the Middle Ages. Originally, knights or nobles were mounted warriors who swore allegiance to their sovereign and promised to fight for him in exchange for an allocation of land (usually together with serfs living there). During the time period known as the Military Revolution, nobles gradually lost their role of raising and commanding private armies, as many nations created cohesive national armies. This was coupled with a loss of the social-economic power of the nobility, owing to the economic changes of the Renaissance and the growing economic importance of the merchant classes (or bourgeoisie), which increased still further during the Industrial Revolution. In countries where the nobility was the dominant class, the bourgeoisie gradually grew in power; a rich city merchant was more influential than a minor rural nobleman. However, in many countries at this time, the nobility retained great social and political importance; for instance, the UK's government was dominated by the nobility until the twentieth century.

The nobility of a person might be either inherited or earned. Nobility in its most general and strict sense is an acknowledged preeminence that is hereditary: i.e., legitimate descendants (or all male descendants, in some societies) of nobles are nobles, unless explicitly stripped of the privilege. In this respect, nobility is distinguished from the peerage: the latter can be passed to only a single member of the family. The terms aristocrat and aristocracy are a less formal means to refer to persons belonging to this social milieu. Those lacking a distinct title, such as junior siblings of peers (and perhaps even the children of 'self-made' VIPs) may be considered aristocrats, moving within a small social circle at the apex of a hierarchical social pyramid.

Blue blood is an English expression recorded since 1834 for noble birth or descent; it is a translation of the Spanish phrase sangre azul, which described the Spanish royal family and other high nobility who claimed to be 'pure', free of Moorish or Jewish blood, being of Visigothic descent. There is no connection between the phrase and the actual blood color of nobility; however, in the ancient agricultural societies of Europe the whole upper class had superficial veins that might be more visible and appear bluish by comparison to the rest of the pale-pinkish skin, as the skin itself was not tanned. In contrast with the working class of the time (mainly peasants), nobility and in general upper class people did not have to work outdoors, and mostly lived sheltered from the sun by dwellings and attire. The same contrast could be observed between untanned upper-class Europeans—especially of Northern-European stock, whose skin tends to be less pigmented—and all social strata of Mediterranean populations with higher levels of genetically determined skin pigmentation. An alternative traditional explanation, argyria (a disease causing a blue-grey skin tone after digestion of silver), is considered less valid, as table silverware was not regularly used by much of the nobility. (Becket (film) dramatizes the introduction of the fork at the court of King Henry II of England.)

Robert Lacey explains the genesis of the blue blood concept: "It was the Spaniards who gave the world the notion that an aristocrat's blood is not red but blue. The Spanish nobility started taking shape around the ninth century in classic military fashion, occupying land as warriors on horseback. They were to continue the process for more than five hundred years, clawing back sections of the peninsula from its Moorish occupiers, and a nobleman demonstrated his pedigree by holding up his sword arm to display the filigree of blue-blooded veins beneath his pale skin—proof that his birth had not been contaminated by the dark-skinned enemy. (Robert Lacey, Aristocrats. Little, Brown and Company, 1983, p. 67)

The same expression is encountered in several European languages:

Albanian	gjak i kaltër(djak i kalteur)
Bosnian	plava krv
Bulgarian	синя кръв (sinya krăv)
Czech	modrá krev
Croatian	plava krv
Danish	blåt blod
Estonian	siniveri
French	sang bleu
Dutch	blauw bloed
Finnish	siniverisyys
German	blaues Blut
Greek	γαλαζοαίματος (galazoaímatos)
Hungarian	kékvérű
Italian	sangue blu
Lithuanian	mėlynas kraujas
Maltese	demm blu
Norwegian	blått blod or blåblodig
Persian	Najabat or نجابت
Polish	błękitna krew
Portuguese	sangue azul
Romanian	sânge albastru
Russian	голубая кровь (golubaya krov’)
Serbian	плава крв (plava krv)
Slovak	modrá krv
Slovenian	modra kri
Spanish	sangre azul
Swedish	blått blod

In France, influential high bourgeois, most particularly the members of the parlements (courts of justice), obtained noble titles from the king. The old nobility of military origin, the noblesse d'épée ("nobility of the sword") became increasingly irritated by this newer noblesse de robe ("nobility of the gown"). In the last years of the ancien régime, before the French Revolution, the old nobility, intent on keeping its privileges, had pushed for restrictions of certain offices and orders of chivalry to noblemen who could demonstrate that their family had enough "noble quarterings" (in French, 'quartiers de noblesse'), a reference to a noble's ability to display armorially their descents from armigerous noble forebears in each of their lines of descent to demonstrate that they were descended from old noble families, who bore arms that could be quartered with their own male line arms, and thus prove that they did not derive merely from bourgeois families recently elevated to noble rank. A noble could be asked to provide proof of noble antecedents by showing a genealogy displaying seize quartiers (sixteen quarterings) or even trente-deux quartiers (thirty-two quartering) indicating noble descent on all bloodlines back five generations (to great-great grandparents) or six generations (great-great-great grandparents), respectively. This illustrates the traditional link in many countries between heraldry and nobility; in those countries where heraldry is used, nobles have almost always been armigerous, and have used heraldry to demonstrate their ancestry and family history. (However, it is important to note that heraldry has never been restricted to the noble classes in most countries, and being armigerous does not necessarily demonstrate nobility.)

Nobles typically commanded resources, such as food, money, or labor, from common members or nobles of lower rank of their societies, and could exercise religious or political power over them. Also, typically, but not necessarily, nobles were entitled to land property, which was often reflected in the title. For example, the title Earl of Chesterfield tells about property, while the title Earl Cairns was created for a surname. However all the above is not universal; quite often nobility was associated only with social respect and certain social privileges. An example of the latter would be late XIX-cent. Polish szlachta after their political, economic and judicial privileges were abolished. In the modern age, the notion of inherited nobility with special rights has become, in the Western World, increasingly seen as irrelevant to the modern way of life. The founding fathers of the United States rejected anything that could have helped in recreating a nobility; the French Revolution abolished the nobility and its special privileges (though some nobility titles would be recreated by Napoleon I and III, they were mostly honorific).

A list of noble titles for different European countries can be found at Royal and noble ranks. To learn how to properly address holders of these titles, see Royal and noble styles.

Some con artists also sell fake titles of nobility, often with impressive-looking documents to back them up. These may be illegal, depending on local law. They are more often illegal in countries that actually have nobilities:such as European monarchies. In the U.S., such commerce would be a form of fraud, but it would only victimize the buyer of the supposed titles and would not threaten an established class of nobes with enforceable titles.

Nobility in non-Western countries

Medieval Japan developed a feudal system similar to the European system, where land was held in exchange for military service. The daimyo class, or hereditary landowning nobles, had great social and political power. Like their European counterparts, they commanded private armies made up of samurai, an elite warrior class; for long periods, these held real power without a real central government and often plunged the country into a state of civil war. Although there are differences, the daimyo class can be compared to European peers, and the samurai to European knights, but with important differences, such as the distinction between the European code of chivalry and the Japanesecode of bushido. These feudal titles and ranks were abolished in Japan with the Meiji Restoration of 1868 and replaced by the kazoku, a five-rank peerage system after the British example which granted seats in the upper house of the Imperial Diet, but this too was abolished in 1947, following Japan's defeat in World War II.

Many other non-Western nations have had noble or aristocratic classes of various kinds: these are so diverse that it is somewhat misleading to try to translate them all into western feudal terminology. For the feudal hierarchy on the Indian subcontinent, see princely state.

In some Islamic countries, there are no definite nobility titles, but the closest to that are given the title Syed or Sayyid. This exclusive title, given only to certain descendants, literally means, 'Sir' or 'Lord'. There are no special rights concerning the title: they are considered more religious than the general population, and many people come to them for first-hand religious questions.

In East Asia the system was often modelled on imperial China, the leading culture, where the emperor conferred degrees of nobility, which were not permanent but decreased a rank each generation. China had a feudal system in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, but the system gave way to a more bureaucratic system beginning in the Qin dynasty (221 BC). By the Qing dynasty, titles of nobility were still granted by the emperor, but served merely as honorifics: under a centralized system, governance in the empire was the responsibility of the Confucian-educated scholar-officials and local gentry.

In tribal societies, such as and the Polynesian Island states, the system of often (semi-)hereditary tribal chiefs can also be compared to a form of noble class; in Tonga, after Tongan contact with Western nations, the traditional system of chiefs developed into a Western-style monarchy with a hereditary class of barons, even adopting that English title.

Nobility by nation

For full categorized countries, see ; some other follow:

• Armenian nobility
• Austrian nobility
• Baltic nobility related to the nowadays areas of Estonia and Latvia
• Belgian nobility
• Bohemian nobility
• British nobility
• British peerage
• English peerage
• Welsh Peers
• Scottish peerage
• Irish peerage
• Peerage of Great Britain
• Peerage of the United Kingdom
• Bulgarian nobility
• Chiefs of the Name Ireland
• Chinese nobility
• Croatian nobility
• Dutch Nobility
• Fijian nobility - the Ratu
• Finnish nobility
• French nobility
• German nobility
• German comital titles
• Junker
• Hungarian nobility
• Nobility of Italy
• Imperial Roman titles
• Roman aristocracy and bureaucracy
• Byzantine aristocracy and bureaucracy
• Nobility of Italy
• Japanese nobility
• Thai royal and noble titles
• Korean nobility
• Malay nobility
• Maltese nobility
• Norwegian nobility
• Persian nobility
• Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth nobility - Szlachta
• Portuguese nobility
• Principalía
• Russian nobility
• Boyars
• Serbian nobility
• Spanish nobility
• Swedish nobility

See also

• Almanach de Gotha
• Aristocracy
• Caste (social hierarchy of India)
• Ennoblement
• Gentleman
• Gentry
• Heraldry
• Peerage
• Royal and noble ranks
• The Military Revolution
• Redorer son blason

Sources and references

• Friesian- Feudal Hierarchy (scroll down)
• Heraldica.org - European Noble, Princely, Royal, and Imperial Titles &
• A Glossary of Titles in 35 Languages
• Etymology OnLine

External links

• WW-Person, an on-line database of European noble genealogy
• Paul Theroff's An Online Gotha
• Genealogics, an extensive database of European nobles
• Worldroots, a selection of art and genealogy of European nobility
• RoyalArk- ruling houses in many non-European countries
• Web site on the Royalty, the Nobility, the History and the Patrimony
• The Armenian nobility
• The Maltese Nobility and its ilks.
• The Russian Nobility Association in America
• Italian dynastic genealogies (in Italian, with an introduction in English)
• Worldwidewords
• OneTree Genealogy - European Royal and Danish-Norwegian-Swedish Nobility Lineages
• Fake titles
• Nobility News

Social stratification : Social class  •  • [ e]
Bourgeoisie	Upper class	Ruling class	Nobility	White-collar
Petite bourgeoisie	Upper middle class	Creative class	Gentry	Blue-collar
Proletariat	Middle class	Working class	Nouveau riche/Parvenu	Pink-collar
Lumpenproletariat	Lower middle class	Lower class	Old Money	Gold-collar
	Slave class	Underclass		Classlessness
Social class in the United States
Upper class	Middle class	Lower class	Income	Educational attainment