Talk:List of post-nominal letters (United Kingdom)

Order of Letters

Two things I would like to change (apart from getting rid of the school letters!):

• First (and I don't think it can be disputed): Medical qualifications surely means FRCS, LRCP, DPH, and so on. Degrees in medicine and surgery (BM, BCh, BAO, MCh, DM, and other permutations) are university degrees and should appear as such. They are medical qualifications, but for the purposes of where to list them I think they are degrees. My Debrett even lists "MB BS" and "MS" in the university degree section.

• Secondly (more controversial): I think religious orders (pace Debrett) should appear immediately after the name (in the case of a baronet, possibly after Bt/Bart; presumably members of religious orders would not be esquires[?]). Basil Hume, for example, is almost always "Basil Hume OSB OM". I know it's not necessarily a good guide, but type "Basil Hume OSB OM" and "Basil Hume OM OSB" into Google and you will get twenty times as many returns for the former version (inlcuding the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, the Catholic Church in England and Wales, and Clifford Longley) as for the latter (only two of those, both of them Italian). Henry Wansbrough is definitely always "The Very Revd Dom Henry Wansbrough OSB MA STL LSS", not "MA STL LSS OSB". The letters for the religious order are bestowed by the Church on behalf of God, to whom even the Queen defers! They are also virtually part of the person's name, especially if he has taken a new name on becoming a monk (or friar etc). --Oxonian2006 (talk) 01:47, 12 May 2007 (UTC) (diff) —Preceding unsigned comment added by AusTerrapin (talk) 15:36, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

First point – Debrett's website has degrees included with medical qualifications. They have a pretty comprehensive list of what they count as a medical qualification there, I have brought this page in line with that.

Second point – I would be inclined to agree, but the sources (Debrett's, archived MoJ style guide) both put religious letters with medical qualifications. I think it would be better for the page as a whole to stick to following those sources and note where other sources disagree at the top of each section.

Robminchin (talk) 22:51, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Eton and other school alumni

OE for old Etonian... okay, but then why aren't KS and OS listed, for King's Scholar and Oppidan Scholar respectively. Those are legitimate postnominals.161.73.37.81 17:24, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I should have thought that OE, KS, and OS would only be used internally. Thus, The Rt Hon David Cameron MP, or even The Rt Hon David Cameron MA MP, but surely not The Rt Hon David Cameron MA MP OE, unless mentioned in Etonian literature. HRH Prince Michael of Kent GCVO OE? Surely not.

Shouldn't this list only include post-nominal letters that are used in a public context? Otherwise we will have to start including "OSomething" for every school that has ever existed (assuming that all of them, even theoretically, use some kind of post-nominal lettering for their old members).--Oxonian2006 15:24, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I have checked the list and see that the suggestion is that OE (or OM for Old Mancunian - not to be confused with Order of Merit!) comes before MP (and lots of other letters). I think we should just get rid of the "School Alumni" section.--Oxonian2006 15:29, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Totally agree. These aren't really "postnominals" even internally but just a short form of identifying Old Boys. A school newsletter might say "At Prize Day the prizes were awarded by Lord Joe-Bloggs OB" to take pride, but a headmaster who's also an Old Boy will not include "OB" with other postnominals on things like prospectuses, letter heads, retirement portrait notices and so forth.

(Also "alumni" in the UK is primarily only used for universities; for schools the terms are "Old Boy", "Old Girl" or a more generic "former pupil".) As no-one's objected to removing the section for months, I'll take it out now. Timrollpickering 15:05, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

SRS

where does SRS (Secretary of the Royal Society) go? before or after FRS I assume. Robert Hooke is referred to as SRS is some old documents. Ed g2s 13:17, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I would say that all positions: Secretary, President, etc, are covered in the table by the office of PRS and PPRS. Generally, if the office is mentioned, then there is no mention of the fellowship. Thus, one would not write Robert Hooke, SRS, FRS, but would write Robert Hooke, SRS. -- Lord Emsworth 00:51, Dec 22, 2003 (UTC)

British Academy

I've noticed that we're missing the British Academy and its associated post-nominals, but haven't the foggiest as to where to place them in the learnèd societies section.

Anyone with an idea, or know where to find out?

James F. (talk) 19:11, 14 October 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Oliver Nouther (talk • contribs)

Undergraduate/Ordinary National Diploma

according to the BTEC Extended Diploma article it says that students are entitiled to put OND or Dip after thier name but on this article it says only Dip, should i change it to Dip and OND? Tony (talk) 14:41, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Change of a name within" Fellowship or membership of learned societies, academies or professional institutions"

Dear fellow editors/users, Our organisation the "Institute of Broadcast Sound" changed its name last December to the "Institute of Professional Sound". This means that our post noms changed too, i.e. MIBS changed to MIPS As part of our name change we have redirected the link "www.ibs.org.uk" to "www.ips.org.uk" as we own both domains. One of our committee tried to edit this page to reflect the change of post noms but the edit has been rejected. I am about to try again and I wonder if anyone can help with tips to get the changes through. Obviously it is very frustrating for us that Wikipedia, being the first point of call for many researchers, is one of the last places on the web where we cannot correct our entry. All advice gratefully received. Norton850mk3 (talk) 16:02, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Youth Parliament

Removed them from the list. They are not legislators, only a group which debate youth issues and use the title 'Parliament' like 200 or so other organisations in the UK. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.28.220.250 (talk) 15:48, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Legal degrees

The article currently says that the bachelor degrees in law are LLB, CPE and DipLaw. This is incorrect. The CPE and DipLaw are not bachelors' degrees. One is a conversion course for graduates of other disciplines and the other is a way of circumventing the need to have an undergraduate degree before taking professional training. In the UK the bachelors' degrees in law are LLB and BA. In the USA the equivalent is JD. The CPE and DipLaw are at the same level as foundation degrees in the British system. I shall amend the article accordingly.--Zubedar (talk) 00:40, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Surely the normal usage for LL degrees is with a stop between LL and the degree type, such as LL.M. The use of LLM seems like an error here. Markjeff (talk) 14:28, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

The two variants are LL.M. and LLM – the latter being standard nowadays in the UK. Historically, LL.M. was used but would now be anachronistic (it is still used in the US, but the use of stops in degree abbreviations is becoming less common there as well). Robminchin (talk) 16:31, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

"Latin-ising"

I'm slightly confused by the reference to the University of York being "York" now instead of the Latin form "Ebor". As it happens, there's a York University in Canada which uses "York". And given that the whole point (now at least) is to specifically reference the university graduated from, I would suggest taking that out.

York graduates, as far as I know, always use Ebor; the same may not be true for others, such as Oxford, but in that one case... VCW (LordSarnoc) (talk) 20:14, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

York appears to be what is used by the University of York, unless they're employing a lot of Canadians.[1]

Robminchin (talk) 22:56, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Medical Qualifications

I don't think that qualifications in homeopathy should be listed alongside recognised medical qualifications in this list, nor should it be given the same precedence. Homeopathy has been repeatedly proven to be ineffective pseudoscience. It is categorically not medicine, and therefore a qualification in it is not a medical qualification. At best, it is a qualification in so-called 'alternative medicine'. If consensus is reached on this page, may I humbly suggest moving the entry elsewhere. 94.9.223.117 (talk) 22:42, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

University of Kent Letters - Conflicting Sources of Information

The letters published for the University of Kent (formerly, the University of Kent at Canterbury) in this page are "KENT". This conflicts with the information found in the several sources below, which all suggest it is "Cantuar":

• University of Kent
• Cantuar
• http://www.abis-global.org/en/university-kent

Although, please note, it appears that the third source above, has been plagiarised from the ones above.

Cantuar is, according to the sources above, Latin for Canterbury but is used by the Archbishop of Canterbury as a shorthand substitute for his surname in signatures. The sources above go on to state that it is also a Latin abbreviation for the University of Kent at Canterbury. This statement seems anachronistic, and so may not be true.

We need to resolve this conflict. Can someone please assist? An obvious starting point may be to contact a credible source at the University. However, a better avenue may be to consider how these letters are decided/determined/agreed in the first place.

IqbalHamid (talk) 11:18, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

I notice the wikipedia pages mentioned fail in both cases to cite sources for the claimed use of Cantuar by Kent. The use of abbreviations is decided by 1) by style guides and 2) by usage. As far as usage goes, I was only able to find one example of a Kent graduate using Cantuar, but this is complicate by Cantuar bring well established as the abbreviation for Lambeth degrees (granted by the Archbishop of Canterbury). As far as style guides go, Cantuar is the only Latin abbreviation used in the Oxford Calendar – and referred there to Lambeth degrees. Robminchin (talk) 23:37, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

MIM and Cy.E.?

Does anyone know what the post-nom "MIM" and "Cy.E" would be? It's from the Gazette, 1938 New Year Honours. "Sydney Ernest Platt, MIM and Cy.E., Superintending Engineer, Public Health Circle, Bihar." I thought MIM could be MIMechE, but they use MIMechE several times in the same supplement. Thanks! —Мандичка^YO 😜 14:38, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

MIM could be Member of the Institute of Metals (a predecessor institute the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining). Robminchin (talk) 17:43, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Secondary Education

Why do we have a section for Secondary Education? It is not an achievement to go to a school, because your parents force you to. And why stop there? Why not start with primary education, or even earlier. How about the Huggies Pull-up Club - HPC? Or in mid-life, being a long standing member of the South-eastern Wife-swappers allows you to proudly put SW, or maybe SEWS after your name. Should a member of staff at the London Brick Company be able to put LBC after their name? Because there is no difference, a member of staff is a member of staff, regardless of where they are employed.
Joking apart, there is no achievement involved either by the pupils nor by the staff, so I think that the whole section Secondary Education should be removed. Kiltpin (talk) 13:05, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree. There is far to much bloat throughout these "honours". Since this ultimately stems from the Orders of precedence in the United Kingdom anything that is outside of that should, IMHO, be removed. Draconian, yes but Wikipedia is not indiscriminate collection of information.  Philg88 ^♦talk 13:38, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree that the secondary education list should go and I also note there is also a lot of unnecessary duplication. This is a list of post-nominals, not a full list of acronyms. However the list is not about the Order of Precedence, it is about conventionally recognised post-nominals; according to Debrett's Correct Form, 2006 the following, in the order shown, are customarily used (and formed the basis for the list structure until secondary education was added):

• Baronet or Esquire
• Orders and decorations conferred by the crown
• Designated Royal appointments to the sovereign (paraphrased)
• Designated other Royal appointments (paraphrased)
• University degrees
• Religious orders and medical qualifications (ie fellowships, qualifying diplomas and other post-degree diplomas from a professional governing body, not degrees or random other qualifications)
• Fellowships of learned societies; Royal Academicians and Associates; Fellowships, memberships etc of professional bodies; Writers to the Signet
• Membership of Parliament
• Membership of one of the Armed Forces

AusTerrapin (talk) 14:52, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Learned Societies

I wonder how many of these supposed learned societies have a physical building attached to them. Is there any way of checking the authenticity of these institutions? Kiltpin (talk) 15:04, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

I've been going through checking them out, and most I've seen appear legit. I removed one (the Engenium Society) that seemed non-notable. I would recommend (as a guideline) inclusion of societies that have either a wikipedia entry of their own (and so have been established as notable, which implies legitimacy) or have a royal charter. There may be exceptions where a legitimate organisation has neither a charter nor a wikipedia page, in which case closer investigation may be needed, but this guideline should work in most cases.

The Privy Council list of organisations with Royal Charters can be downloaded from https://privycouncil.independent.gov.uk/royal-charters/chartered-bodies/

Robminchin (talk) 22:44, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Another place to check is the HMRC list of "Approved professional organisations and learned societies" (for claiming back membership against tax).[2] Not everything will be on here, but if something is then the government has recognised it as authentic.

The Charity Commission can tell you if an organisation has been registered a charity.[3]

Companies House can tell you if it has been registered as a company. This doesn't tell you if it's a scam, but does mean it has been incorporated and isn't just a couple of kids with a website.[4]

Robminchin (talk) 23:24, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

I've now finished going through the institutes without wiki pages. Three were not on the lists of professional institutions, Royal Charter institutions, or charities:

• International Society for Philosophical Enquiry – US-based charity whose Wiki page has been deleted. Doesn't belong on the UK list. Deleted.
• Faculty of Emergency Nursing – appears to be a spin-off from the Royal College of Nursing, and has taken part in government consultations, etc. Definitely legitimate.
• Society of Bereavement Practitioners – Newspaper reports confirm this exists and is a small (200 person) membership organisation. Probably falls below the income threshold for having to register with the Charity Commission, but appears legitimate.

A bigger issue than fake organisations seems to be post-nominals assigned that the organisation doesn't acknowledge or even (as with the Royal Philatelic Society of London) expressly disavows.

Robminchin (talk) 17:43, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

'GM' for Great Master of the Order of the Bath??

I have removed this line as I can't find any evidence that it is correct: Prince Charles is currently Great Master, but still has the post-nominals 'GCB' (http://www.debretts.com/forms-address/royal-family/other-members-royal-family/private-secretaries-royal-family), and the [Order of the Bath page] states that there are '120 Knights or Dames Grand Cross (GCB) (of whom the Great Master is the First and Principal)'

'GM' should correctly refer to a holder of the George Medal. --Alexmb (talk) 14:00, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

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Association of Corporate Treasurers

Association of Corporate Treasurers is missing from the list — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.110.71.110 (talk) 14:58, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Chartered Institute of Fundraisers https://ciof.org.uk is also missing from the list 77.44.87.193 (talk) 23:40, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

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The RAS link was not dead, the St Andrew's link is dead. Debrett's doesn't seem to like deep linking and redirects to the home page (but the page is actually still there). The tools were unusable, so I am fixing things manually. Robminchin (talk) 15:40, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

Dates for learned societies, etc.?

Astronomy Explained added that learned societies, etc., are sometimes ordered by date of foundation. Looking into this, I was able to add a citation to Titles and Forms of Address that confirmed the statement. With this in mind, is it worth adding dates of foundation to the various societies, or is this information that can be found easily enough by clicking through to the relevant artices and would just be clutter here? Robminchin (talk) 15:48, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for ascertaining that it was Black's that mentioned date precedence, Robminchin. I recalled the opinion but not its origin. As for including dates in the table: I believe that it would be useful information for those preferring that method and consider that one extra column of six characters wouldn't constitute "clutter". Astronomy Explained (talk) 08:03, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

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Getting back to the topic of secondary schools

Greetings fellow Wikipedians.

In my opinion the section on secondary schools does not belong here. These are definitely not postnominal letters akin to those awarded in return for some national service or academic study. They are simply institution-specific abbreviations.

OC (for example) can refer to old boys and girls of:

• City of London School (Old Citizens) since 1442
• Charterhouse (Old Carthusians) since 1611
• Caterham (Old Caterhamians) since 1811
• Clifton College (Old Cliftonians) since 1862
• Cranleigh (Old Cranleighans) since 1865
• Clayesmore (Old Clayesmorians) since 1896
• Cheltenham College (Old Cheltonians) since 1841
• Canford (Old Canfordians) since 1923

... and many more ...

The definition of "OC" in the article was given as a former pupil of Clifton College but if used outside its specific institution an OC might only ever have referred to (in general parlance) an Old Carthusian (Charterhouse), one of the seven schools referred to in the Public Schools Act 1868.

A pupil might be referred to in a school magazine as "J. Jones (OC 1997)" to explain to the reader that he attended the school, but more likely would have an entry of "J. Jones (W 1997)", where the W would represent the house he was in at the school. It's not postnominal lettering. You might just as equivalently claim that David Lloyd George (W) and Stanley Baldwin (E) are postnominally from Wales and England!

Might I suggest that this subject is covered adequately in Old Boys?

Best wishes all,

--TomboPC (talk) 22:32, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Removal sounds like a good idea to me. These aren't ever used publicly as post-nominals (that I have seen), even if they are used so in school magazines. Robminchin (talk) 03:12, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Agree. Kiltpin (talk) 22:55, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Completely agreed on letters like OE, OM etc when its just a case of having gone to the school - although honours granted by some royal authority (e.g. King's Scholarship, granted by the authority of HM Queen - KS), should remain however. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.128.205.125 (talk) 09:55, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Disclosure

I have added the designation 'Chartered Public Relations Professional' to the list, with a link to the CIPR Bylaws as a reference. I am the CEO of the CIPR. Mccapra (talk) 14:41, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

List of postnominals not backed up by cited reference

This text is in the article:

"Black's note that where a professional body or society has multiple grades of membership, only the highest is used except in professional correspondence, and that fellowships "election to which is a distinction" (e.g. FRS, FRSA, RA, FBA) should be used on all correspondence."

But FRSA (Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts) is not in the reference. In fact, this was added to the list by this edit in March 2018. The reference has a slightly different list:"FRS, RA or FRA, RSA, FBA are examples.. RSA there refers to Royal Scottish Academician, not Royal Society of Arts.

A related discussion is at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Biography. Historylikeyou (talk) 18:32, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Good spot, that should be corrected. Somebody presumably thought RSA was a typo. Robminchin (talk) 22:01, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Medical Qualifications under Religious Institutes?

For some reason, there is a section titled "Religious institutes and medical qualifications" with two co-equal subsections for each of those. That makes absolutely no sense -- those two things have nothing to do with each other. If it was not for the section title that included both I would have assumed it was just an inadvertent formatting error.

Medical post-nominals might conceivably fit in the next section that includes professional institutions, but given the prominence and number of medical post-nominals, it really should just have its own top-level section.

Unless there is a consensus not to, I plan to move Medical Qualifications out from under Religious Institutes to its own top-level section. MCB (talk) 23:45, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

It's ordered like that because they are grouped together in the sources that give the order of the post-nominals, e.g. Debretts: "5. (a) Religious orders (b) medical qualifications." Robminchin (talk) 04:35, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. However, Debrett's did not write the article (I hope!) and while it is an excellent source and authoritative in many instances, I believe it is more important that the organization of the article make logical sense rather than conform to the notions of a particular publication, especially one with a rather archaic style. I looked all over the page attempting to find a particular medical initialism (MRCVM), and was very surprised to find it hiding under a header for Reigious Institutes. MCB (talk) 05:54, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

True. I'd suggest simply separating the two oot and keeping the order, so that they remain in the order they would appear in post-nominals. Robminchin (talk) 16:21, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Medical and Professional Qualifications - Paramedics

Just a point of interest, MCPara and FCPara are not qualifications, they are levels of membership of a professional body. You don't study to become an MCPara, you pay the College of Paramedics (CoP) a monthly fee of £12.50:

https://collegeofparamedics.co.uk/COP/Members1/Join_the_College/COP/Membership/Join_the_College.aspx?hkey=6148f538-23f1-44e5-8004-3455b984eefc

As it is not a qualification, maybe MCPara should not be listed as such.

The FCPara is awarded by the CoP to members of a certain standing, but again, it's not a qualification, it's an honorary post:

"To be recognised as a Fellow of the College of Paramedics, recipients need to have made an outstanding contribution to the achievement of the College and the paramedic profession."

https://collegeofparamedics.co.uk/COP/News/2022_Honours_and_Awards_Recipients.aspx?WebsiteKey=9a9b21e9-7e94-4adf-a89a-ebe1cb57da56

These post-nominals appear under the Medical Qualifications and Professional Qualifications sections, but should perhaps be limited to the section for Fellowship or membership of learned societies, academies or professional institutions, where they already appear alongside GASI and FASI.

The opposing position to my thinking is that a number of royal society memberships appear in the Medical Qualifications section.

I'm a writer member of the Performing Rights Society, but this does not entitle me to a post-nominal even though it's a professional body for musicians. I'm also an HCPC registered paramedic, but I'm not a member of the College of Paramedics. However, I could 'earn' this post-nominal for a monthly fee, without gaining any additional qualification. As such, I'm not sure this post-nominal is correctly described. Mooseharris (talk) 09:57, 27 September 2023 (UTC)