Talk:Substantive title

"Prince of the United Kingdom" not substantive?
The article currently claims that the title "Prince of the United Kingdom" is not substantive, but this doesn't seem right to me. I thought it was an inherited title. (Not sure that's the right term - it's not a specific title, yes, but it's not a style either - maybe "rank" is the applicable word?) I.e. children get it automatically at birth. It's certainly not a "courtesy title", or gained through marriage, which are the two "non-substantive" ways we list for getting a title/rank. Noel (talk) 20:50, 14 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Blast. We seem to have somehow lost an edit I made to this page. I'll have to recreate it. Noel (talk) 01:31, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Our "list" of ways to receive courtesy title is not exhaustive, imo, and should perhaps be amended, =thought through yet more carefully. Namely, the general signal of substantive title is that it is held by only one person at a time and is inherited only at that person's death or corresponding event. And, in that sense, prince of uk is not substantive. Actually, it is directly comparable to those noble titles of certain continental countries, where a patent or like confers the same title (freiherr, count, herzog, prinz, furst) to all members in male line. And that is mentioned as the clear case of non-substantive title here. Perhaps we should not be doing dichotomy of courtesy-substantive, as there could be more categories, this also requires more thinking through. I would add P of UK to the earlier place. Arrigo 07:57, 16 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Exactly! The title of freiherr (baron), graf (count), herzog (duke) and other continental titles (not only in the Germanic Continental system) are only substantive titles for the head of the family (e.g. The Duke of Bavaria is a substantive title, but Duke Max of Bavaria is not, because it is a "waterfall system" title). Also, substantive titles proper can never include the name of the holder (i.e. the title is the same no matter who inherits it, bringing back to mind HRH The Duke of Bavaria). In this way, Prince(ss) of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is non-substantive because it is: 1) not held by the same single person 2) changes depending on the holder's name. --TheThickPlottens (talk) 15:40, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Self contradicting
This article is in need of cleanup. It starts by stating that a substantive title is one gotten through grant or inheritance, as opposed to a courtesy title, or one obtaine by marriage, and then it goes on to state that only titular holders of titles (as in Comte de Clermont or Duke of Leinster ) are substantive, while titles accruing to all members of certain families, including some of the nobles in Europe are not (as in Princess of Belgium, Infante of Spain and Princess of Sweden). Obviously some precisions are in order. This has arisen concerning an AfD discussion regarding Princess Luisa Maria, Archduchess of Austria-Este Some people hold that, as a royal and daughter of some of the most highly titled families of Europe, she's automatically notable, others say nay because the propsed guidelines at Notability (royalty)(3) specify the titles should be substantive. Regardless of actual outcome, this underlines some weakness in these articles, that specialists should help correcting. --Svartalf 21:57, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
 * This article needs more than clean-up, it needs reality. "Substantive title" strikes me as an altogether ersatz term, so recent, diverse, and imprecise in usage that it is premature to define it as a dictionary term, let alone as an encyclopaedic one. The original editor contrasted "substantive" with "courtesy" titles, legality being the chief distinction. The next editor added the notion that "substantive" titles are unique to the titleholder, rather than shared by members of a category. These two unrelated concepts were thus conflated in Wiki, and now we are trying to evolve rules and definitions to support a non-concept that Wikipedia has violated its own no original research principle to reify. Worse, ongoing efforts to define Notability (royalty) are trying to rely upon this wobbly term as here defined. It's causing more confusion than its resolving, and should be deleted until 1. there are published sources defining and/or using the term; 2. there is some consensus on what it means, rather than a couple of bold editors who know what they want it to mean. Just a few of the problems that defy this article's premises:
 * Titles may be legally conferred and regulated, yet belong by right to multiple members of a class, e.g. "Prince of the United Kingdom".
 * Titles may exist and descend in reigning dynasties by tradition, having never been legally created, some of which are borne uniquely by one individual, some by a category, and the same title may operate differently in different monarchies e.g. "Queen Mother", "Prince of Denmark", "Prince of Bourbon-Parma".
 * A title may descend to a category of persons and yet be legally conferred upon individuals who do not qualify for membership in that category, e.g. "Prince of the United Kingdom" (Philip of Greece), "Infante of Spain" (Carlos of Bourbon-Sicily).
 * Some styles are simultaneously substantive (unique) and non-substantive (courtesy), i.e. "Comte de Clermont" (which belongs to a subset of unique courtesy titles known as titles of pretence).
 * Some styles are substantive or not depending upon point of view or subtleties in usage, e.g. "Princess Beatrice of York" (her title of princess is legal, but the British court and media ignore law in favor of tradition: there is thus a Beatrice who is a Princess of the UK -- but who is never styled as such, while there is no such thing as a "Princess of York", but there is a Beatrice who is always styled as such). There is "Ernst August, Prince of Hanover" and "Prince Ernst August of Hanover", who are two different people, the former title being a unique title of pretence, the latter a generic title. "Prince of Hanover" is a courtesy title (at best) in Germany, but an official title in Monaco and Great Britain. In Belgium, there is officially an "Archduke Lorenz of Austria" who, in Austria, is "Prince Lorenz of Belgium". Yet by the reasoning of this article, his Austrian title is the substantive one (because it is unique to him as head of a particular family), while the Belgian one is non-substantive (because it is shared by all descendants of King Albert II). In short, navigating royal titles is a labyrinthine process. It would be useful to do it in a Wiki article, but the artificial creation of "Substantive title" muddies rather than clears those waters. 23:30, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Simple definition
A substantive title is one with a basis in law. A courtesy title is one that is based on usage and nothing else. 62.25.106.209 18:42, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
 * This is a substantive definition! :)
 * I can add that titles granted by king Umberto II of Italy after proclamation of the Italian Republic are considered within CILANE as courtesy titles: no base in law, but actually used (as much as titles are used in Italy, where they have no legal status more). --Vadsf (talk) 00:32, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I would add that this simple definition is not necessarily true. Waterfall system titles (such as Prince of Bavaria for the male-line descendants of the Dukes and later Kings of Bavaria) had a legal basis and were not simply courtesy titles. They were not, of course, substantive, but they were still legal. Furthermore, a title can still be substantive even if it is no longer recognized in the nation of origin, notable examples including the German high nobility, whose titles are treated as very substantive when their children marry ruling dynasties such as the House of Grimaldi. --TheThickPlottens (talk) 15:40, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Since 1929, German titles are lacking any substance. They are now merly used out of courtesy.--Theoreticalmawi (talk) 18:38, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Unsourced material to be removed
I will be removing everything that has no sources here, some of which has been source-tagged for over a year. There won't be much left. Fair warning! The article is being used to purport expertise. That does not exist when the material has no reliable sources. SergeWoodzing (talk) 13:36, 5 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Hello @SergeWoodzing. I totallly understand the need for reliable sources (I check, add and format sources whenever I can, mostly in the French wikipedia, I'm well aware of how crucial it is). I see you removed the word "nobility" from my edit, saying it's not mentioned in the source. Are you sure about that? The paragraph about substantive titles is called How titles of nobility are used. It says (emphasis mine):
 * "You must check reference sources to decide if the customer holds the title of nobility in their own right (they are the substantive holder)"
 * I would add (although it's a rather trivial argument) that the word "nobility" is used 40 times across the whole source page. It seems quite obvious to me that we're talking about nobility titles here. Couldn't the word be restored to the header? Castor Gravy (talk) 00:14, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
 * ✅ --SergeWoodzing (talk) 08:44, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you @SergeWoodzing! Castor Gravy (talk) 11:23, 20 April 2024 (UTC)