MILITARY RANK WORDS: How to say 'lieutenant' and why army hierarchy is all wrong

In this etymological march through the army ranks I'm rewriting the military hierarchy. I've come up with a new order for the rankings of officers and soldiers based entirely on what the titles *actually* mean.

Check out my 'New Military Order' and while you're at, discover:
📗 Why LIEUTENANT is pronounced loo-tenant and lef-tenant/left-tenant
📗 Why COLONEL is spelt in that confusing way
📗 What links a SERGEANT with a butler
📗 Why a FIELD MARSHAL should actually be the lowest rank
📗 Where one should place one's PRIVATES

Check me out on Twitter & TikTok:

==CHAPTERS==
0:00 Introduction
1:10 LIEUTENANT - How to say it (loo-tenant v left-tenant)
3:52 COLONEL - Why it's spelt like that
5:21 SERGEANT - Why it means servant
6:23 MAJOR - What it means
7:12 CAPTAIN - Its Latin origins
7:38 CORPORAL - Nothing to do with corporal punishment
8:16 GENERAL - Why it's so vague
9:09 PRIVATE - Why are they private?
9:57 FIELD MARSHAL - Why they're just a horse servant
11:02 Final Rankings

[K.Dilkington]

I remember a guy in basic training asked the drill sergeant why a Lieutenant General outranks a Major General, but a Major outranks a Lieutenant. The drill sergeant told him "to confuse the enemy."

[michaelsheard]

An old observation: In the army, privates sleep in general quarters while generals sleep in private quarters.

[gsmiro]

It's very interesting that the military officers in ancient Chinese has a title called "si ma" 司馬, which means, "in charge of horses", which means in charge of war. And the highest military officer was called 大司馬 "da si ma" or great sima. So it corresponds well with the word "marshal". I think the people understood that horses meant war and it so those in charge of the horses are in charge of war.

[kriegscommissarmccraw]

Actually, a horse muster would typically be placed above a servant on the hierarchy. Same with a falconer. The lord's beasts were extremely expensive, and the education required to keep track of them extraordinarily expensive to.

[darlamcfarland]

Hello, Rob, from Utah, USA. I am a 70-year-old English language lover from a very young age, though I thought it made me an oddball. At the age of 8, I started keeping notebooks of words I wanted to know, not just their meanings but origins too. I read dictionaries for fun! In high school I enjoyed reading grammar and English usage books, and later became a magazine editor. Discovering your channel was like finding a group of kindred spirits, both you and your subscribers. Their comments add so much to my enjoyment of your channel. Thank you!!!

[kelvinkelly]

I wish I was still in the army, I'd show this presentation as often as I could! Lowly Servant, Greater Servant...I cried tears.😂

[Nikioko]

The Marechal was the royal stablemaster and therefore a very important person in the army in which the cavalry were the most important troops. Just like the majordomus wasn't a simple house servant.

[pdnpatrickmitchell]

The word sergeant has a parallel in the word deacon, from the Greek diakonos meaning "servant, " but not just any servant—a trusted servant, a minister in the service of a magister (whence master). Deacons were the executive assistants of bishops, who are still addressed as despota or "master" among the Orthodox today. As the servants of bishops, deacons had considerable authority. Likewise, sergeants, as the executive assistants of captains, had considerable authority over the men in the ranks.

[davymckeown]

Love this, it's really confusing for recruits. A corporal is sometimes called a bombardier, a sergeant is sometimes called a corporal of the horse and privates have a multitude of names. (Guardsman, Fuselier, Gunner etc).

[FalseNomen]

Rob, would you consider doing this for ranks in the Navy? I know that 'admiral' has a very interesting etymology. Maybe there's some other interesting ranks there. Great video!

[badunius_code]

6:10 "sergeant" is the soldier who had their own equipment for the battle, so you don't have to arm him. Usually this also meant that this person had their share of battles and experienced to some degree, so you can trust them with commanding your newbies.

[tringalij]

As a retired Lieutenant Colonel, I remember explaining ranks to my kids and wife, as they lived and grew up on bases too. For a while we were assigned on exchange with the Canadian AF and we had Brit pilots with us in the US so we learned the variations and got used ti being called a Leftennant Colonel for a bit 😂

In general the lieutenant term works correctly because it’s tied to another rank: lieutenant commander below commander, lieutenant colonel below a colonel. Makes sense. My daughter asked why, when the insignia are the same (like the oak leaf or the bar) the gold one is lower ranking than the silver one. That came from back when they were brass, and they just got shined up in the 70s I think. But like the English language itself, ranks are all a mixture of ancient Roman, French, German, and English history.

[thedoubleabattery]

I love how simple these videos are, no quick cuts or any crazy editing. It's a video style you don't see enough on YouTube.

[mdphdetc]

The reason for the confusion is that many two word titles were shortened to single words. Privates were at the bottom of the ranking system because as non-professional soldiers all the professional servants/soldiers would be placed above them. A Corporal-Private might be selected from among the privates to serve as a chief of these lower ranks, but the pros were always going to outrank them in the overall system. In particularly large groups of privates, they could also insert another level to supervise the smallest possible unit, a lance, hence Lance-Corporal-Private, which is between Private and Corporal. Also, sometimes privates are split into Private-First-Class or Private-Second-Class etc. Among the pros, sergeants might be placed to supervise different aspects or sizes of units, so there could also be Staff-Sergeants, Gunnery-Sergeants, First-sergeants, Range-Sergeants etc. The sergeant above all the others was always going to be the major sergeant, or, turned around Sergeant Major. The equivalent in some systems is a Chief-Sergeant. Now we get into the people who could actually give orders, aka the officers. The head of a unit was a Captain. In a navy, this remains the equal of a Colonel, since the unit of command is pretty much always a ship. (And with the insertion that the person running just part of the ship was a Commander.) In the army, however, captains could could command different size units. A small unit would be commanded by a regular old Captain. A larger unit would be commanded by a Major-Captain (later shortened to just Major), and the head of a really big unit, a column, was a Colonel. Each of these could have a stand in, so Lieutenant-Captain (later just 1st or 2nd lieutenant) or Lieutenant-Colonel. The general is still the head of the whole army, but as there are different sizes of army (the smallest being a brigade) so Brigadier General being the lowest ranking general, a Major General commanding a larger unit, and THE General being the top of the whole thing. The boss also needs a stand in, who is the Lieutenant-General (and leads to the strange fact that a Lieutenant-General outranks a Major-General). We don't have Field Martials in the U.S., so that one I can't explain. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that in both the Roman army, and later with medieval knights, senior soldiers were identified by the fact that they were on horseback.

[OLDCHEMIST]

Very interesting analysis! I remember my mum correcting me for saying "LOO-tenant", saying it was American English, but in those days, there were so many American films on TV.

[syerathelynx]

Hey! French military officer here. I do believe that Marshal has more to do with a wrong translation of the word "Maréchaussée", which was in medieval time France's brand new military police, (that then became the Gendarmerie). They typically held a superiority over the regular soldiers. Now I do agree that we have the word "Maréchal" which is included amongst many ranks in our military (Maréchal Des Logis Chef, equivalent to Chief Sergeant, for instance). They were first introduced to the Cavalry regiment and then spread throughout the ground branch of the French army. A Maréchal Des Logis was a soldier with higher responsability and with the rank equivalent to a Sergeant.

Great video!

[gunner]

I am a military man and i found this interesting. I have often said as much about military titles. Great video. In the french militay, a major is a WO1 (RSM). The British major is a field officer, above captain below colonel, which in the french army is commandant.

[Theguyunderyourbed]

In greek, ypsilon (Y, υ) can have three different pronunciations depending on its placement. It can be pronounced as an e (ee sound) if it's at the beginning of a word or after a consonant but if it's between two vowels the pronunciation then changes to either a V (vee sound) or an f (in greek φ). So in greek if we kept the lieutenant spelling as is, the word would be pronounced lee-ef-tennant, or if we remove the i at the start, leftennant.
This characteristic of ypsilon is somewhat maintained in some greek derived words in english, like in leukemia (λευχαιμία, lefchemia) which however is not pronounced in English as an F but rather an oo sound (loo-kemia). I'm not entirely sure if this property of ypsilon is present in any other language or latin, and I highly doubt that in the case if lieutenant greek had anything to do with it since the word does not exist at all in greek and most military terms are derived from France and Britain, but I think it's interesting to point out nevertheless seeing as how both English and French are highly based on Latin and Greek.

[terragthegreat]

Fun fact: the reason why a 'lieutenant Colonel' in the US Army has its own command position (where logically a colonel's lieutenant would probably be more of an Executive Officer) is because in the past, Colonels would delegate so much authority to their Lieutenant Colonels that the LTC's ultimately became the defacto heads of their organizations, and colonels eventually got slotted up to a higher echelon.

[Trucmuch]

The only one I disagree with is Corporal. Because to be the head is only as important as what you're the head of. Are you the head of the whole army or are you the head of a small squad? And that's precisely what a Corporal is. He's (or she is) the head of a small squad. The word is correctly used and respects its etymology.