Board Thread:Midian Ideas/@comment-4701109-20170608204333/@comment-24302820-20190215061516

If you're wanting to add Esquire after the name--as in 'Bill S. Preston, Esquire', or as is common for lawyers in the UK--then I don't really see much of a problem with just using that term as-is. Context should help keep it distinct from the squires of gunslingers, much as the terms were in the aforementioned Real World™® nation with little to no confusion. Alternatively, we could borrow similar terms from other languages, such as Signore from Italian, or Monseigneur from French. We could also use The Honourable (name) convention of formal address used for elected or appointed positions lacking an official title or designation. Permutations on this include additions like The Right Honourable or a synonym such as The Solemn (name). Any of these could be used by either the legislators or the seconds, depending on how you want to change things.

As a post nominative, I rather like Fustian, as in 'John Carthy, Fustian'. It's silly, I'll admit, but it's fun. We could always say that the usage comes from the original definition of the style of cloth--based on ceremonial vestments worn by the House of Commons, whether current or historic usage--with the second and third definitions of the term then being derived from the usage by legislators.

If I had to pick one of these options, I'd probably just stick with Esquire. It gets the job done. Any potential linguistic confusion is perhaps mitigated by showing how both squires and legislators are connected by the law, while also more subtly showing that neither are properly gunslingers.

Esquire as a broader judicial term could be used for both the professional seconds and for the members of the House of Commons with minimal confusion. It's reasonable to assume that the HoC took the term from the broader cultural use of seconds. This could be either because most of them (if not all) in early days were Esquires-as-seconds or a deliberate use of co-opting the term as the House of Commons was collectively acting as the second for the nation as a whole.