John Podhoretz’s “Mau-Mauing the Flacks” (Mar. 11) was charming. However, I must point out your error in etymology. Although “Esq.” after a lawyer’s name is admittedly pretentious, it is an appropriate honorific, even for women lawyers.
After 1066, when William the Conqueror’s legitimated offspring established the King’s Courts, the lawyers were considered “sergeants of the law.” They descended from the middle class of those who invaded England with William. There were three classes of those invaders: knights, squires, and gentlemen; the last were men without land or title who nevertheless had escaped from serfdom.
Thus, a squire in the Middle Ages was “higher than a gentleman (a freeman) but lower than a knight,” as Pollock and Maitland write in The History of English Common Law.
The judges of the King’s Court were originally all knights, that is to say, officers, while the advocates were squires, so “esquire” was a proper honorific for those who today would be called barristers and solicitors in the United Kingdom.
Thus, it is not inappropriate for lawyers in the common-law system of the United States to refer to themselves as “esquire.” It is pretentious but permissible, like most of what lawyers make of themselves in this society.
FREDERICK L. SIMMONS, LOS ANGELES, CA
