Hereditary Title

Hereditary titles, in a general sense, are titles, positions or styles that are hereditary and thus tend or are bound to remain in particular families.

Some hereditary titles are inherited only by the eldest son (see primogeniture); others may pass to the eldest child of either gender, or to all children of a family equally (although this is rare) or can be shared and thus multiplied in the case of a title and/or divided in the case of a 'real' object. In some traditions inheritance by adoption is an alternative to inheritance by biological kinship, as in the Hindu tradition to assure there is a male heir of the same caste.

Prominent examples of hereditary titles include:

• Hereditary monarchy - in the Commonwealth realms, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, Japan, Thailand, Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Monaco, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Jordan, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tonga and Bahrain. Other national constitutions use different modes of succession to their monarchies, e.g. the election of the Pope in the Vatican City, and especially in the Orient often adding an element of selection (e.g. at a family council) among eligible relations of the monarch. Special cases are the two elective monarchies, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates, where the constituent states of each federation are hereditary monarchies but those rulers form an electoral college which assigns the federal position of head of state to one of their number for a term (of five years).
• Titles of nobility in the United Kingdom and other countries (see peerage). In the United Kingdom, most titles of nobility (peerages and the lower title of Baronet) pass only to the eldest son (or occasionally the eldest daughter in the absence of male heirs); all other sons and daughters of peers are commoners though they may use one or more not independently heritable courtesy titles, either Lord, Lady or The Honourable depending on the rank of the peerage held by their father or mother, or another title styled like a peerage but without a seat in the Lords, usually one or two ranks below father's. In many European countries titles may be inherited by all the heirs male of a family, whose members thus all share the same title at the same time (for instance, within the szlachta nobility of Poland or in the nobilities of the successor states of the Holy Roman Empire). In the Far East the main (Chinese-induced) tradition is rather for titles to devalue as the generations succeed each other, but not to the same rank.
• Some court titles, e.g. in the United Kingdom, including Earl Marshal and Lord Great Chamberlain. Most of these are sinecures, i.e. purely ceremonial. They pass generally to the eldest son (except for that of Lord Great Chamberlain, which is split between the heads of the Cholmondeley and Willoughby families).
• Many other -especially feudal age- offices became inheritable, often connected to military (e.g. keeper of a castle; in Japan even Shogun) and/or domanial functions, which is also why some such functions became noble titles (e.g. Burgrave, Margrave)
• While the hereditary membership of a privileged class or caste may imply a title or not (sometimes confusingly called untitled nobility), it frequently forms a prerequisite for various titled positions, e.g. quarters of nobility required by a military order.
• Certain religious positions, such as the Aga Khan and Dā'ī al-Mutlaq.