Talk:President (title)

French usage and other complications

This article was originally the work of Doops, who offered a very neat theory (I use "neat" in both its colloquial and its formal meanings): that "president" had always meant a speaker or chairperson (i.e., one who conducts the meetings of an assembly and can cast a tie-breaking vote, but otherwise has no special authority), until Henry Dunster decided to call himself the President of Harvard because he was an alumn of Magdalene College, Cambridge, whose second-in-command was called the "president," and Dunster, being a Puritan, wanted to make an appropriate show of humility in his choice of title. Then other American universities followed suit, and when the framers of the US Constitution needed to come up with a title for the chief executive of their new federal government, they went for the university usage and settled on President. The rest is history.

This was a very interesting theory and I still believe it might be mostly accurate, but I also think the Doops might have been slightly blindsided by his background (his user page identifies him as an anglophile and a Harvard alumn). In the French usage a president had been a powerful officer before the U.S. Constitution or Henry Dunster (see, for instance, fr:Président à mortier).

This definitely complicates Doop's theory. It still seems likely to me that the French usage had no direct influence on the evolution of the term in the United States, though this should be a matter of further investigation. And it's clear that all modern Presidential chief-executives, including the President of the French Republic, owe their names to the influence of the US Constitution of 1787. But, as I said, the picture appears less neat. Doops is, of course, welcome to weigh in on this.

The article also doesn't mention something contained in the Britannica article on "president:" that before the American Revolution there were presidents of the local governments of Delaware and Pennsylvania. I don't know enough about that subject to put it in the article at this point. Where these powerless speakers like the President of the Continental Congress, or were they chief executives? Did those positions come into existence after Dunster became the president of Harvard, or not? -- Eb.hoop 06:36, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Hi. First of all, thanks for bringing in the French information. But from what you've written it seems that French usage was entirely in line with the British — the president presided over something. So I think it only adds detail and color to the "theory" rather than clouds it.

Secondly, I hope this article doesn't appear to be a pet "theory" of mine since that would definitely cross the Wikipedia: No original research line (with which this article has always flirted). Although I admit that when I first put the page together I had nowhere ever seen one coherent explanation of the history of the term president, I attempted not to think about it in those terms when writing it. In particular, I'll try to find sources and cite them. That is to say, I didn't write the page with reference to any source at the time; but I'm sure its contents were picked up by osmosis, as it were, over the years.

Thirdly, I want to clarify the situation of Dunster. Some Oxford/Cambrdige colleges are headed by "presidents," some by "masters," and I think there are a few other variations. I had never really speculated as to why Dunster was president and not master. But — and so this is one part of the article which is definitely not "my theory"! — I read somewhere (once I find this source I'll definitely add it) that Dunster distinctly chose the second-in-command title because he always hoped that Comenius could be persuaded to come run the place. So it had nothing to do with puritanism, but with his personal modesty/diffidence. (I'm actually not entirely sure I buy into this theory, which is why it has that "some have suggested" intro.) Doops | talk 19:18, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

What has mainly bugged me about this from the beginning is that I had a vague sense, corroborated only recently by research, that Président had traditionally been a title of the highest prestige in France. As I now realize, it in fact became an effective title of nobility during the ancien régime. See, for instance, this guy: the Président de Maisons. A noble de robe (essentially a hereditary magistrate) would be the Président de Maisons in the same way that a true noble, (noble d'epée) would be the Marquis de Condorcet.

The name président, as you say, originated from the role of presiding over trials and hearing, but in the pre-revolutionary French system judges became extremely powerful and filled many non-judiciary functions. The prestige of their title grew accordingly. Even after the revolution, the civil law system continued to give judges great power and social standing, while also making the position of chief judge (président) one of significant administrative authority over other judges. So I think that in the Latin world and in civil law countries, this French usage, independent of the Anglo-American developments which were the focus of your article, might have contributed to the association of the office of president with executive authority. -- Eb.hoop 08:43, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Why capitalise presidents?

As an occasional non-American contributor to Wikipedia, I've long been puzzled by the US practice of using "President" as an honorific - even when the incumbent is long dead.

In American culture, is it considered impolite not to do so? And how did this come about in a country that is justifiably proud of its republican traditions?

CallMeHenry 15:29, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Peru

Francis Bacon described Pedro de la Gasca, the viceroy of Peru (1547–1550), as the "President of Peru" in his 1625 Essays (#44). This predates the Commonwealth of England's use of the title "to denote the highest official in a government." It is probably not the first such use of the term though. Richard75 (talk) 21:11, 29 August 2010 (UTC)