Talk:Doctor (title)

Latin a America?
Wow you seem to have successfully ignored the existence of about 32 countries in your "Americas" section... Well done! In Mexico, we use Doctor titularly when addressing either a medical practitioner or a PhD holder (we don't call it PhD, we call it "doctorado" as in doctorate). In colloquial speech, only medical practitioners referred to as "Doctor", and demanding to be addressed as one when not a medical practitioner is viewed as arrogant and distasteful. Furthermore, in most of Latin America career professionals with university degrees are addressed according to their vocation. E.g. People with engineering degrees are addressed as "Ingeniero", prefixed as "Ing." in writing and colloquially can be shortened to "inge", often omitting the person's name when addressing them directly. For people with architectural degrees: "Arquitecto", "Arq." and "arqui", respectively. For most liberal arts or law degrees: "Licenciado", "Lic." and "lic", respectively. The title "Profesor(a) " is used instead when the person is also a teacher, abbreviated as "Prof." or "profe" in colloquial speech, regardless of the person's area of expertise. Additionally, holders of Masters degrees are never referred to as "Master" but teachers in non-university settings are referred to as "Maestro(a)". //Citations needed for everything but I'm sure you'll manage to find them. 213.137.70.51 (talk) 07:34, 6 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Looks good. You should find the citations and contribute this to the encyclopedia. The other titles for engineers, architects, etc. might be off topic for this article, but mentioning them in passing of probably fine. Robminchin (talk) 21:11, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

About medicine and law...
First of all...

"In many parts of the world today it is also used by medical practitioners, regardless of whether they hold a doctoral-level degree."

This is nonsense. No one can even apply for a license to practice medicine, unless (s)he holds a Doctorate (either MD or DO) in that field. As any Doctorate, it is equal in academic rank to a PhD, EdD, PsyD, etc. Physicians are called Doctor, as are those who hold PhDs, because both have Doctorates, full stop!

Second of all...

About the earlier Talk Page section debating whether lawyers could theoretically use the title instead of Esquire: While the degree to become a lawyer is a Juris Doctorate, keep in mind that the Latin root of Doctor means having the authority to establish doctrine in one's respective field of study.

In law, the only field where doctrine can only come in the form of legislation, an individual lawyer claiming the authority to establish it would carry the connotation of wanting to be a dictator or an absolute monarch. Hence the title of Esquire to avoid that connotation, and to maintain that the state (not any individual) is the one and only Doctor of Law.

Hope this helps. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 01:32, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
 * This does not help very much. You open with "in many parts of the world" but continue with a very specific Anglo-Saxon take on the topic; which ignores most of the usage across the world.
 * For example in my own country (the Netherlands) physicians are called arts or dokter (note the spelling difference to the Dutch use of doctor for those holding a PhD) and to gain that licence you need to have a completed MSc in Medicine a PhD (although common) is not a requirement (a dokter can either have a master or an MSc and an additional doctor degree.)
 * Your claim about doctor of law is even more singularly US focussed, as the use of esquire and the use of Juris Doctor seems to be very much US specific. Oddly enough (reading the Doctor of Law article) this title only requires a BSc equivalent level of training (where again in other countries the requirement for lawyers is to hold a master in law (LLM or equivalent) with the doctor of law being a research doctorate into the workings of the law (and jurisprudence). Arnoutf (talk) 11:28, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
 * My mother is retired now, but she was a doctor - a paediatrician, to be precise - in the UK. She had a medical degree, and lots of training and experience, but she did not hold a doctoral-level degree. My understanding is that it is quite unusual in the UK for medical doctors to have doctorates. Girth Summit  (blether)  11:36, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
 * "In many parts of the world today it is also used by medical practitioners, regardless of whether they hold a doctoral-level degree."
 * This is nonsense. No one can even apply for a license to practice medicine, unless (s)he holds a Doctorate (either MD or DO) in that field. As any Doctorate, it is equal in academic rank to a PhD, EdD, PsyD, etc. Physicians are called Doctor, as are those who hold PhDs, because both have Doctorates, full stop!
 * I'm afraid the nonsense is your claim that this is nonsense. In the US, it is true that you need an MD or DO, but 'many parts of the world' includes areas that are not in the US and do not follow the US system. In the UK, and much of the Commonwealth, the basic medical degree is the MB BS (bachelor of medicine and bachelor of surgery).
 * Your claim that the MD and DO (and other professional doctorates such as the JD) are equal in academic rank to the PhD is also untrue, even within the US, see (for example) Structure of U.S. Education from the US Department of Education, or any international assessment of US professional doctorates. These are generally considered to be master's-level qualifications (as is, despite the name, the MB BS). Robminchin (talk) 21:28, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Entrance requirements, not just name
In most of the world, a medical degree is a terminal degree, hence why physicians are called Doctor. In India, I've read that this isn't the case, and that country's medical schools regularly accept students fresh out of high school.

The oddity of India is not the name of their medical degree (the MBBS), but the fact that schools regularly accept fresh high school graduates without an undergrad program in between.

In other countries, the respective medical degree may be called something other than a Doctorate for historical reasons, but it's still a terminal degree and thus requires an undergrad--not just a high school degree--ahead of time in order to apply for admission to the program.

And before anyone responds that PhD programs require a Master's ahead of time and not just an undergrad: No, they don't. A Master's makes you a more competitive applicant to a PhD program but is not an absolute requirement. PhD programs consider applicants with a Bachelor's and an above-3.0 GPA both overall and in-major, although the requirements for some programs and/or in some fields of study may be somewhat stricter than that.

The latest revert seems to be on the premise that merely the name of a degree is what makes it a Doctorate. No, especially not when that name is historical in nature; it's the entrance requirements, needing an undergrad ahead of time, and the fact that unlike Master's programs Doctoral programs require applicants to interview before acceptance.

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and has feathers like a duck, does its country have to call it a duck in a largely-historical name to make it one? Because medical schools definitely walk, quack, and have the feathers of a Doctoral program. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 22:28, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I am sorry but I do not see why terminal degree would equate to doctorate. Many professional vocational training programmes (e.g. carpentry) are also terminal degrees in their discipline and do not grant a doctor title.
 * In addition, there are many countries where students enroll into medicine programs fresh out of high school where the medicine program grants a MSc in medicine as degree, and yes, this will still make the person being referred to as dokter as that has for historical reasons become a synonym to physician (such as in my own country the Netherlands)
 * Also there are countries where an MSc level grade is a legal (!) requirement to enter a PhD programs (such as the Netherlands) and I am pretty sure that legal requirement makes all PhD programmes in my country requiring an MSc ahead of time.
 * So in short, please take a global look on the issue. Arnoutf (talk) 15:22, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
 * This does appear to be a very US-centric view. As Arnoutf mentions, many countries enroll students into medicine programs straight from school, not just India. And in most of the world, it's doing research that makes a degree a doctoral degree, and there are frameworks that define this – the US calling degrees like the MD and the JD doctorates is definitely the outlier. In Australia, for example, the medical degree is also called the MD, but it is not a doctorate in the academic sense and does not confer the title of Doctor. Robminchin (talk) 17:47, 11 December 2023 (UTC)