Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Peerage titles

There are many formal rules for how to refer to peers and understandably so, although I always get irritated with pedants who seem to insist that anyone who uses the most common name for a person is wrong - how many philosophers write about the "3rd Earl Russell" or whatever the formal term is? And my college at the University of Kent was always described as being named after "Ernest Rutherford" not "Lord Rutherford" - how do physicists, chemists and stamp collectors refer to him?

Nick Assinder reports that one of the newest ennobled peers is styling himself "Digby, Lord Jones of Birmingham" (BBC News: Commons Confidential: July 2007). I can understand why he may want "Digby" to still be there, but why not just style himself "Digby Jones"? Or even take a different title - what about "Baron Digby-Jones"? After all there was "Lord George-Brown".

1 comment:

Jonathan said...

At least he's using a correct form of his name, and not calling himself "Lord Digby Jones". Certain peers do use the latter form, but you have to wonder, if they can't even get their title right, do they deserve a seat in the House of Lords? The BBC website could also do with lessons from Lord Jones of Birmingham as they frequently get it wrong.

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