Generally speaking, a professor at the English universities of Oxford or Cambridge, a Catholic priest or abbot, and a crime boss don’t have much in common—but they do at least share one thing: the title don or dom (which has one etymological root). To some, it may seem confusing why people from such radically different walks of life share the same honorific. How did this happen? As is often the case with etymological quandaries such as this, the answer goes back over two thousand years to the ancient Romans.
Roman origins
To find the ultimate source of the title don we must go back to a rather surprising ancient Latin word: domus, which means “house” or “household.” From domus comes the word dominus, which, in ancient Rome, originally meant the master of a household who exercised authority over all its members, including his wife, his children, and the people whom he enslaved. Enslaved members of the household were expected to use this title to address their enslaver. Its rarer feminine equivalent is domina, which referred to the mistress of the household, the master’s wife.
After Rome came under the rule of autocratic emperors, dominus eventually became an imperial title, but it took a long time to do so. Augustus (r. 27 BCE – 14 CE), who is considered the first Roman emperor, eschewed the title dominus; instead, he preferred to be called princeps, meaning “first man,” which nicely suited his public pretense that he was a republican officeholder with powers vested in him by the Senate and people of Rome, rather than an autocrat. For the first three hundred years of imperial rule, most emperors followed Augustus’s titulary. For this reason, modern historians call the period of Roman history from 27 BCE to 284 CE the Principate.
The ancient Roman biographer Suetonius (lived c. 69 – after c. 122 CE) records in his Life of Domitian 13.2 that the emperor Domitian (r. 81 – 96 CE) was the first to demand that his subjects call him “dominus et deus” (“master and god”), but the titles did not catch on and they do not appear in reference to the emperor in official texts or inscriptions until nearly two centuries later in 274 CE, when the emperor Aurelian (r. 270–275 CE) minted coins bearing the declaration “dominus et deus natus” (“The master and god is born”).
ABOVE: Photo from Wikimedia Commons showing an ancient Roman bust of the emperor Domitian, who is said to have been the first to demand that his subjects call him “dominus et deus“
Diocletian, who was proclaimed emperor in November 284 CE, adopted dominus as an official title and emperors after him followed suit. From Diocletian’s reign onward, the already-shaky pretense of the emperor being a republican officeholder appointed by the Senate was completely dropped and imperial power became more nakedly autocratic. For this reason, modern scholars have labeled the period of Roman history from the reign of Diocletian (or sometimes Aurelian) onward the Dominate.
Meanwhile, early Christians who spoke Latin adopted Dominus as a translation for the Greek word Κύριος (Kýrios), meaning “Lord,” which is used in the Septuagint and the New Testament as a title for the Judeo-Christian God, itself a calque of the Hebrew title אֲדֹנָי (ʾAḏōnāi), meaning “my Lord,” which observant Jews had earlier begun to substitute for the proper name of God when reading aloud from the scriptures.
Thus, in late antiquity, the emperor and God both bore the same Latin title: Dominus.
Middle Ages
During the Middle Ages, Dominus (or, more often, its contracted form Domnus) became a title of respect for persons in positions of high authority; commoners used it to address royals and nobles, parishioners to address priests, and monks to address abbots.
The first European universities gradually emerged over the eleventh through thirteenth centuries CE in cities such as Bologna, Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, Salamanca, and Padova as ecclesiastical institutions. All assigned readings and lessons were in Latin (which all students were expected to speak, read, and understand fluently) and teachers and students alike were considered clergy. At these universities, students were expected to choose a “master” (known as dominus or domnus in Latin) from among the teachers, who would supervise their studies. Thus, dominus became an academic title for a faculty supervisor.
By the late Middle Ages, in Italian and Spanish, domnus was shortened to simply don, while in Portuguese it was shortened to dom. English adopted the shortening of don (possibly influenced by Spanish, Italian, or both) by the early sixteenth century and it is attested in use for masters at Oxford and Cambridge by the mid-sixteenth century.
ABOVE: Manuscript illustration by Laurentius de Voltolina depicting a class at the University of Bologna c. 1350s
Modern development
Through the Early Modern Period, don/dom remained in use as a title for faculty at the ancient universities in England, for nobles and diocesan priests in Italy and Spain, for members of the royal family and higher-ranked clergy (e.g., bishops, cardinals) in Portugal, for abbots in France, and for nobles and members of the landed gentry in Hispanic America.
The eponymous protagonist of Miguel de Cervantes’s novel Don Quixote (published in two parts in 1605 and 1615) is a minor noble who adopts the title don when he decides to become a knight errant, as an English knight might adopt the title sir.
The application of don to crime bosses is a more recent development derived from the Italian use of don for nobles. It is associated with the mafia, which originated in Sicily and later spread to the southern Italian peninsula and to southern Italian immigrant communities in the United States. Mafiosos applied the title to their bosses as a show of respect. The word is first attested with its underworld meaning in English in 1952, but probably goes back further.
Mario Puzo’s bestselling 1969 novel The Godfather and Francis Ford Coppola’s wildly successful 1972 film adaptation of it, followed by two sequels, popularized this use of don through their depiction of the Italian American crime lord “Don” Vito Corleone (played by Marlon Brando) and his son and successor Michael (played by Al Pacino). Subsequent gangster films, television shows, and other media further propagated the title.
ABOVE: Theatrical release poster for the 1972 Francis Ford Coppola film The Godfather, which popularized the use of the title “don” for a mob boss
A common confusion
Contrary to what some people might assume, the title don in reference to a professor, a priest, or a mob boss bears no etymological connection or relationship to the personal name Don as a shortened form of Donald. The name Donald is an Anglicized form of the Scottish Gaelic name Dòmhnall, which is hypothesized to derive from the reconstructed Proto-Celtic name *Dubnowalos, which means “world prince” (formed from *dubnos meaning “world” plus *walos meaning “prince” or “chief”).
For once, no American political implications! (hehe)