Is esq. a title

Answer 1

"Esq." is short for "Esquire" and is a title. This title is British in origin and often used to refer to people of the British gentry. For instance, people who have received a grant or matriculation of a Coat of Arms by letters patent (from an Officer (Herald) of Her Majesty the Queen) are Esquires. It is a courtesy title which denotes that the person is above the rank of Gentleman (gent.) but below the rank of Knight (sir). He is in short a candidate for Knighthood. This is the truest meaning of the word; all Armigers (those who are granted arms) are Esquires. A Scottish Armiger (under the Queen's court of the Lord Lyon) is in addition enobled due to the nobility clause included in a grant of Scottish Arms. An English grant under the College of Arms, does not include this same clause. A Scottish Armiger (Esquire) has the additional privilege of wearing a single eagle feather behind his crest, indicating that he is an Officer of his clan or family. His crest is his personal emblem which sits atop his helm (helmet), which in turns sits on his shield which bears his emblazon of arms, which are typically 'differenced' from other members of his family, showing precedence and order of birth. Only the eldest son inherits the same undifferenced arms of his father as his heraldic heir; younger sons have to indicate a slight difference which indicates their precedence. Wives may display the crest of their husbands, or if from an armigerous family may impale their fathers arms on their husbands arms. A daughter may display the arms of her father in an oval, but may not pass them to her children. A coat of arms is tied up to a name, and may not be separated from the name. There is of course no such thing as a family coat of arms. A coat of arms is the personal and heritable property of one person only. The courtesy title Esq., has been 'assumed' by members of both sexes in the US legal profession, although there is evidence that other professional men, Engineers etc. also used this 'title' during the 19th and early 20th century. In the UK however a female lawyer would never be addressed with this title. A male UK lawyer may be addressed as such, but he would never actually sign himself as such. It is exclusively a male title, equivalent to Master. This use by US solicitors is considered by some to be a pretentious practise, since in the USA the use of courtesy titles is forbidden by the US Constitution. In recent years American lawyers have become increasingly rude about their assumption of the title, imagining that they alone have this right, to the extent that even when they meet British bearers of this 'coutesy title' of gentry and in the Scottish case nobility, some wrongly assume that the British are somehow wrong to use this title. Perhaps it adds further weight to the argument to consider that if Scotland's Lord Lyon has in addition granted a territorial designation to an armigers grant, eg. 'John Brown of Somewhere', then the armigers wife would be entitled to be addressed as 'Lady Somewhere'. This opinion of US lawyers is however purely subjective. A British Esquire is more likely to be using the title correctly and in its truest and historical context. While an American lawyer using this title is more likely to be suffering from an inflated ego. It would be ludicrous afterall to assume someone else's custom and tradition for vanity reasons, then to further assume that the originator no longer had the right to use the same term for its original and intended purpose. The British of course have been using the title in its correct and original context since the 12th century onwards.