''Batoni'' ( ka, ბატონი) is a
Georgian word for "
lord
Lord is an appellation for a person or deity who has authority, control, or power (social and political), power over others, acting as a master, chief, or ruler. The appellation can also denote certain persons who hold a title of the Peerage o ...
", or "
master
Master, master's or masters may refer to:
Ranks or titles
In education:
*Master (college), head of a college
*Master's degree, a postgraduate or sometimes undergraduate degree in the specified discipline
*Schoolmaster or master, presiding office ...
". It is derived from ''patroni'' (პატრონი), the earlier term of similar meaning, and appears in common usage in the 15th century.
*In
Georgian feudal hierarchy, "batoni" may denote the supreme
suzerain
A suzerain (, from Old French "above" + "supreme, chief") is a person, state (polity)">state or polity who has supremacy and dominant influence over the foreign policy and economic relations of another subordinate party or polity, but allows i ...
(i.e.,
monarch
A monarch () is a head of stateWebster's II New College Dictionary. "Monarch". Houghton Mifflin. Boston. 2001. p. 707. Life tenure, for life or until abdication, and therefore the head of state of a monarchy. A monarch may exercise the highest ...
),
seigneur
A seigneur () or lord is an originally feudal title in France before the Revolution, in New France and British North America until 1854, and in the Channel Islands to this day. The seigneur owned a seigneurie, seigneury, or lordship—a form of ...
, or any secular or clerical who owned ''qma'', i.e., "
slave
Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...
" or "
serf
Serfdom was the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism and similar systems. It was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude with similarities to and differences from slavery. It developed du ...
". The word sometimes appears as a part of the royal and nobiliary titulature. For example, the title of the Princes of
Mukhrani
Mukhrani ( ka, მუხრანი, originally Mukhnari უხნარი i.e., "oak-grove") is a historical lowland district in eastern Georgia (country), Georgia, currently within the borders of Mtskheta-Mtianeti mkhare, region, north o ...
was batoni (
Mukhran-batoni), and the early
kings of
Kakheti
Kakheti (; ) is a region of Georgia. Telavi is its administrative center. The region comprises eight administrative districts: Telavi, Gurjaani, Qvareli, Sagarejo, Dedoplistsqaro, Signagi, Lagodekhi and Akhmeta.
Kakhetians speak the ...
were likewise referred to by that title in some Georgian sources.
[ Suny, Ronald Grigor (1994), ''The Making of the Georgian Nation'', pp. 42-3. ]Indiana University Press
Indiana University Press, also known as IU Press, is an academic publisher founded in 1950 at Indiana University that specializes in the humanities and social sciences. Its headquarters are located in Bloomington, Indiana. IU Press publishes ...
,
*In modern usage, ''batoni'' is an
honorific
An honorific is a title that conveys esteem, courtesy, or respect for position or rank when used in addressing or referring to a person. Sometimes, the term "honorific" is used in a more specific sense to refer to an Honorary title (academic), h ...
used for a
man
A man is an adult male human. Before adulthood, a male child or adolescent is referred to as a boy.
Like most other male mammals, a man's genome usually inherits an X chromosome from the mother and a Y chromosome from the f ...
, an equivalent of both
Mr. and
sir
''Sir'' is a formal honorific address in English for men, derived from Sire in the High Middle Ages. Both are derived from the old French "" (Lord), brought to England by the French-speaking Normans, and which now exist in French only as part ...
. The equivalent
female
An organism's sex is female ( symbol: ♀) if it produces the ovum (egg cell), the type of gamete (sex cell) that fuses with the male gamete (sperm cell) during sexual reproduction.
A female has larger gametes than a male. Females and ...
title is ''kalbatoni'' (ქალბატონი). It can be used with the full name as well as either the last or first name. When addressing someone directly, the word is used in a
vocative case
In grammar, the vocative case (abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which is used for a noun that identifies a person (animal, object, etc.) being addressed or occasionally for the noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and numeral ...
''(kal)batono'' (
ალატონო), and precedes either the first name (more commonly) or the last name, but it can also be used by itself in direct address.
[Braun, Friederike (1998), ''Terms of address: problems of patterns and usage in various languages and cultures'', pp. 106-113. Walter de Gruyter, ]
See also
*
Batonishvili
References
Honorifics
Noble titles of Georgia (country)
Georgian words and phrases
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