Everything about Major totally explained
Major is a
military rank the use of which varies according to country. Moreover,
Major frequently denotes a mid-level command status
officer (immediately superior to the rank of
Captain and immediately subordinate to the rank of
Lieutenant Colonel), however in some armies
major is essentially a senior
NCO (non-commissioned officer), a usage derived from "sergeant-major".
Early history
In considering terms of rank it's important to understand that the early evolution of the terms often was outside of English, and that the term always has been of essentially international distribution. In general European usage, the rank of
Major originates from
Romance comparative adjectives with the sense of Latin
maior (also spelled
major), meaning 'senior' and 'greater'. Historically all Majors, Sergeants Major, and
Major Generals (to use English forms) derive from the rank, or rather the office of Sergeant Major. The Sergeant Major was the senior sergeant responsible for marshalling a
battalion of pike. He was presumably the senior Company Sergeant from among the companies providing the pikemen, or at least a commissioned officer considered analogous to such a non-commissioned officer (sergeant). Hence,
Major is an abbreviation of
Sergeant Major: the (Sergeant) Major 'the senior sergeant'. This is obscured in French and English, by the later evolution of a separate, non-commissioned rank called
sergent major or Sergeant Major. Similarly, the rank of Major General is truncated from original Sergeant Major General 'the sergeant major or sergeant major-like soldier with general authority over the marshalling of the whole army'. Originally, there existed a single Sergeant Major General in each major field force.
The original usage is illustrated in the first recorded(?) English (1643) attestation, as "
Sergeant-Major", 'the third-in-command of a
regiment'. The early German equivalent was Feld Wachtmeister, in which Feld functions as
major and Wachtmeister ('watch master' or 'quarter[-ing] master') is the more commonly used term for a cavalry sergeant. Similarly we early on find Spanish Majors referred to Sargento Major.
In several European
navies, the rank of Major was used in the sense or form "
Pilot-Major" to denote the senior deck officer of a vessel in contrast to the
Captain (or
Captain General) who was typically an Army officer, with little naval knowledge, assigned to command the mission on which a vessel was embarked. The English equivalent of this usage is
Master, as opposed to the
Captain or
Commander.
In the Spanish navy of the 16th and 17th centuries, the captain's principal seaman was the "maestre" (master) who was responsible for the maritime operation of the ship. Next in the chain of command was the "piloto" (pilot) responsible for the safe navigation of the ship. A flagship's pilot was the "piloto mayor" (chief or major pilot) who determined the course of the whole squadron. [1]
NOTES: 1. "Spanish Galleon 1530-1690" by Angus Konstam, copyright 2004 Osprey Publishing Ltd.
Officer rank
In most comparative military scales a Major is a senior officer ranking above company grade ranks that usually include
captain and between one and three lower
subaltern officer ranks. In the
NATO rank code, Major as a Level 3 officer. The naval equivalent to a Major is, in some nations, the rank of
Lieutenant Commander.
By the time of the
English Civil War, Major had become a rank in itself, and was assigned to mid-level officers on the battlefield, and was most often used by those serving as
aides to a superior
General.
Non-commissioned rank
In the
French military, a major is the most senior non-commissioned rank. This rank can only be awarded by senior NCO (
adjudants-chefs), after a very selective exam. Officially it isn't a non-commissioned rank, but an intermediate rank between non-commissioned and commissioned.
Use as a suffix
The rank of Major may still be found in its original form as a suffix (either hyphenated or not), to denote an officer more senior to the base rank. As a suffix,
major derives from a comparative adjective major 'greater' and 'senior' following the modified Romance language noun; for example
Adjutant-Major, and
Colonel-Major. It is also still commonly used in the rank of
Sergeant Major, and is also used in ceremonial appointments such as
Drum-Major and
Pipe-Major.
In Argentina, the armed forces all use the rank of sub-officer-major as the highest non-commissioned rank. The army and air force also use the officer rank of major. The army has a rank of colonel-major, but this is essentially an automatic promotion for long-serving colonels rather than a functional rank in its own right. The
Argentine National Gendarmerie uses the rank of commandant-major, which is roughly equivalent to a
colonel or chief superintendent in the commonwealth.
It is similarly still used as a prefix for the General officer rank of
Major-General, which is similarly used in many other languages (for example Generaal-Majoor in
Dutch).
Links to Major ranks by country
Links to ranks equivalent to Major by country
Commandant (France)
Commandant (Ireland)
Commandant (the Netherlands)
Sojwa (North Korea)
Soryong (South Korea)
Bojnik (Croatia)
Major (Germany)
Sturmbannführer (Nazi Germany)
Tagmatarkhis (Greece)
Binbaşı (Turkey)
Comandante (Spain)
少校 (China)
Thiếu Tá (Vietnam)Further Information
Get more info on 'Major'.
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