Doctoring the Titles

There is something quietly odd about the way we hand out titles in this country. A chap can spend years learning how to rebuild an engine by ear, coax life out of something most of us would have written off, and keep half the nation moving with a box of spanners and a cup of tea, and what do we call him? Dave.

Meanwhile, someone else disappears into a lab for years, emerges with a thesis on the finer points of biochemistry that only a small circle can fully follow, and from that day forward it’s Doctor. Not Dave. Not even Dave-with-a-PhD. Just Doctor, as if he might prescribe antibiotics at any moment. It is not that the title is undeserved, it is the inconsistency that gives it a slightly comic edge.

We have, over time, elevated certain professions into a sort of social nobility, while leaving others, arguably more immediately useful, firmly on first-name terms. Take Doctor. If someone is about to cut you open or decide whether you live to see Tuesday, a bit of deference seems reasonable and you rather want the room to go slightly quiet when they speak.

And then, just to keep things interesting, the moment a doctor becomes a surgeon, we quietly revert to calling them “Mr”, in a nod to a time when they were essentially barbers with ambition. The training has improved somewhat since then, but the title has remained.

Dentists sit awkwardly somewhere in the middle. Some are “Dr”, some are not, and most people would struggle to tell you which is which without looking at the brass plate. Which again suggests that whatever this is, it is not a system so much as a collection of habits that nobody has quite got round to sorting out.

But then along comes Professor. A title so carefully guarded in Britain that you can spend decades teaching at a university and still not be allowed to use it, and once you have it, it follows you everywhere. Dinner parties, bank forms, probably the odd parking ticket appeal. One imagines it helps.

Then we wander into the clergy, where titles multiply like rabbits and you can address the same man in half a dozen ways depending on his denomination and how much incense is involved. It all feels faintly medieval, which is probably the point. The legal system, never knowingly under-formal, insists on Judge or Justice, and you do not pop into court and say, “Morning, Steve,” even if his name is Steve, because the whole system would likely collapse on the spot.

And then there is the military and maritime world, where Captain, Major, and Sergeant do at least serve a practical purpose because it is genuinely useful to know who is in charge without a committee meeting. Calling someone “Captain” is not a courtesy, it is a survival mechanism, and everyone understands that without needing it explained.

Step outside these little islands of tradition, though, and the whole thing falls apart rather quickly. We do not say “Accountant Brown,” even though he may be the only thing standing between you and a tax investigation, and we do not say “Engineer Smith,” despite the fact he probably understands more about how the modern world actually functions than most of the titled classes put together.

Which is slightly ironic, because on the Continent and in a fair few other places, Engineer is exactly the sort of title you would use. In Germany you will happily address someone as “Ingenieur”, and in various other places “Engineer” is used with a straight face. The person who can actually make things work is given the title.

Here, by contrast, the person who fixes your heating is still just Kevin. And then there is the plumber, who can arrive at your house at two in the morning, stop your ceilings collapsing, restore hot water, and quite possibly save your marriage in the process, yet remains stubbornly just Kevin. Try greeting him with, “Ah, Plumber, thank goodness you’re here,” and you will either get a look or a revised invoice, neither of which improves the situation.

Then you get Hayley, which is where the whole system starts to creak a bit.

Hayley is a Doctor, with a doctorate in biochemistry earned through years in a lab rather than a clinic. She is not a medical doctor and she is not a nurse, but she is, in the precise and correct sense of the word, Doctor. She has, in the most literal sense, added to the sum of human knowledge, which is supposed to be the entire point of the exercise.

Put her in a health practice, though, in scrubs, and something quietly revealing happens. The title evaporates and then reappears in the wrong form, because scrubs plus female still nudges people towards “Nurse” without much conscious thought. No one checks, no one asks, and the brain fills in the blank and carries on.

Even when corrected, it does not quite stick, because “Doctor” in that setting has been quietly annexed by medicine. Medical doctors use it as a working title, which is fair enough, but it does mean that anyone else using it looks faintly out of place, like they have wandered into the wrong club wearing the right badge.

That leaves Hayley in a neat little trap. Outside, she is Doctor without question. Inside a health practice, calling her Doctor risks confusion. Not calling her Doctor is simply wrong, and the fallback, rather lazily, is to call her Nurse.

She is not unqualified, quite the opposite, and has spent years acquiring expertise that most people would struggle to follow even if they tried.

There is also the usual nudge of assumption ticking away in the background, where men in scrubs drift towards “Doctor” and women towards “Nurse” often enough to be noticeable. No conspiracy is required for that, just habit doing what habit does.

All of which rather undermines the idea that these titles are precise markers of anything. In practice they are handed out based on clothing, setting, and who looks like they fit the part. Which is how you end up with a biochemist with a doctorate being called Nurse, a medical doctor being called Doctor as a matter of routine, a surgeon being called “Mr” out of tradition, and Kevin still being Kevin.

Kevin, who can actually fix the boiler, remains Kevin, with no title, no deference, and no small hush when he walks in. If we were designing this from scratch, you might give him something grand or at least say “Engineer” with a bit of intent, but instead we have inherited a system where prestige and practicality parted company somewhere in the 18th century and never quite reconciled.

Still, it ticks along well enough, and most of the time nobody notices. Until the heating fails, the titles get muddled, and Kevin disappears for a part just when you thought he was about to fix it.