Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The History of Military Ranks

Starting point is 00:00:00 Every military in the world is a hierarchical organization. There are people at the top who make decisions, people down below who follow those orders, and people in between who make it happen. Today, most militaries have an elaborate rank structure with multiple ranks in the chain of command. However, it wasn't always like that. The modern system of ranks evolved over time, and the ranks that exist today have origins that go back centuries. Learn more about military ranks, where they came from and what they mean.

Starting point is 00:00:29 on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. I'm guessing that most of you are at least familiar

Starting point is 00:01:13 with the most basic military ranks, General, Colonel, Sergeant, Private, etc. What those ranks represent, and what the terms mean, were something that evolved over time. But before I get into individual ranks and how they were established, we should go way back

Starting point is 00:01:29 to how ranks were created in the first place. When humans began organized warfare, it was small bands of people who probably all knew each other. There was no need for a hierarchy beyond that of someone who was a leader. The name of that person was probably, probably just whatever the word for leader was in whatever language they spoke.

Starting point is 00:01:48 However, over time, armed groups grew larger. This corresponded with the rise of civilizations and agriculture. Larger, more organized states were capable of raising larger armies. These armies were a far cry from the band of extended relatives that fought together during the Paleolithic Age. These armies required significant amounts of organization and logistics to move and fight. One of the first civilizations to raise massive armies of this size was ancient Persia. Persia was the largest empire of its time, encompassing many different cultures and languages.

Starting point is 00:02:24 Persia was able to raise armies of tens or even hundreds of thousands of men. They organized their army in a way that actually made quite a bit of sense, something you would have expected to have been developed in later centuries. They organized their units by factors of ten, the smallest unit consisted of. of 10 men and was called a dathabam. The leader of a dathabam was called a dathapadus. The next unit was that of a hundred men called a satabam, which was led by a satapattis. A unit of a thousand men was a Hazarabam and was commanded by a Hazarapadus. Finally, a unit of 10,000 men was a bavarabam commanded by a bavarapadus.

Starting point is 00:03:07 At the very top was a commander-in-chief known as the Aran Safbad. This hierarchy was rather simple by modern standards. An army of 100,000 soldiers who only have five levels of hierarchy, from the top commander down to the simplest soldier. At the bottom of the hierarchy, you didn't have a whole lot of diversity. You had spear-wielding foot soldiers, archers, and cavalry. Logistical roles would have been filled by camp followers or by the soldiers themselves. The Roman military had a very different system, if you remember my episode on that subject.

Starting point is 00:03:39 Their commanders were usually elected during the Republic. period. Oftentimes, armies would be led by one of the two sitting consuls. The commander of an army was called a legate, and under them were tribunes, who were often the sons of high-status Roman families. Below them were centurions who were responsible for much of the real work of the army. After the Roman Empire fell in the West, there were changes to how militaries were organized in both the West and in the remnant of the Empire in the East, aka the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines established a very complicated military hierarchy with the Stratagos at the top, followed by Tour Marches, Drongarios, Domesticos, Magistros, and finally, Comes.

Starting point is 00:04:23 The Byzantine Army is probably worth its own episode in the future, but suffice it to say it was complicated. In Western Europe, feudalism developed, a rigid social system with peasants and nobility. Pretty much every military was a reflection of the feudal system. The head of an army would be a lord or a king. If you were a lesser noble, you would be a knight or some other commander. And if you were a penniless peasant, then you were a foot soldier. With only some exceptions, it really didn't matter how smart or talented you were, social rank was commensurate with military rank. Things started to change in the Renaissance as armies became more professional and larger, but they didn't change that much. Even going into the 18th and 19th centuries,

Starting point is 00:05:07 you could still buy an officer commission in the British Army. Ranks became more formalized in the 18th and 19th centuries, even down to the lowest soldier. As armies became professionalized, they allowed for promotion and advancement even for common soldiers, something which was possible in the past, but the options were very limited. When the World Wars came about in the 20th century, the Allies had issues with their ranks. For the most part, there were similar ranks in each army, but the ranks weren't exactly the same, which made things awkward when you had joint commands. In a previous episode on the subject of six-star generals,

Starting point is 00:05:43 I mentioned that the rank of five-star general in the American military was created simply because other allied armies had a rank of field marshal that the Americans didn't have. When NATO was formed after the war, one of the things the Allies did was normalized their ranks across all the member nations. The names for some of the ranks may be different in some countries, but there were now clear equivalents in rank. Likewise, rank equivalents were made across all branches of the armed services in the United States.

Starting point is 00:06:13 Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force all have the same number of ranks with equivalent ranks. There are currently nine enlisted ranks across all NATO countries, with a special 10th rank for the single top non-commissioned officer in each armed forces branch. Four of the ranks are for enlisted soldiers and five for non-commissioned officers. Likewise, there are 10 NATO equivalent officer ranks, two junior officer ranks, three senior officer ranks, and five general slash flag officer ranks. So with that, I want to discuss the origin of each of the current military ranks. Each rank has a unique history, and the words have unique etymology.

Starting point is 00:06:56 I'm mostly going to be using American Army ranks, but they're very similar to ranks in other countries as well. So I might as well start with the most common rank, that of private. Private is the lowest rank in pretty much any army. Historically, what we consider a private has also been known as a soldier, a footman, or some equivalent. The term private comes from the term private soldier. And you might be asking yourself, what is so private about a private? If there's a private, is there a public? Well, actually, sort of. The term private soldier has been described in a few different ways. The first is that private soldiers were distinct from members of the nobility who were officers and led more public lives,

Starting point is 00:07:42 similar to how someone might call themselves a private citizen. Another explanation is that a private soldier was somebody who didn't have anyone under them. He was only responsible for themselves. The term private soldier is an antiquated term that isn't used much today, but it was frequently used as late as the 18th and 19th century. The term was first used in the British military, and it was later copied by the Americans, who, for the most part, just copied the British ranks. It was first used as a full rank in the military in the 18th century.

Starting point is 00:08:14 In the U.S. Army, there are two ranks of private, the lowest of which is often just called a recruit, and a third rank is called a private first class. Going up in rank, the next rank would be a corporal. A corporal is usually considered to be the lowest rank of a non-commissioned officer. The word corporal is derived from the Latin word corpus, which means body, with the medieval Latin derivative word corporalus, meaning of the body. This rank originally denoted an officer responsible for a body of troops or a particular unit. It currently has a NATO rank of OR4 and a uniform services pay grade rank in the United States of E4.

Starting point is 00:08:54 Next up are sergeants. The word sergeant comes from Old French, which itself comes from the Latin word servie. Viennes, meaning one who serves. This rank historically denoted a servant or attendant. Some organizations, such as the United States House of Representatives, have a sergeant at arms, which is not a military position, but rather reflects the ancient use of the word. The U.S. Army has multiple ranks of sergeant, including Sergeant Major, First Sergeant, Master's Sergeant, Sergeant, Sergeant First Class, and Staff Sergeant. The rank was first used in the British military, and the name came from the fact that each officer was assigned.

Starting point is 00:09:31 a sergeant, which explains the name and its origin as a servant. Today's sergeants are the highest ranking non-commissioned officers, and each rank of the military has a special rank of a single sergeant known as the Sergeant Major of the Army or Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps. Above sergeants are officers, and the lowest ranking officers are lieutenants. The word lieutenant comes from the French words, Lou, meaning place, and tenant, which means holding. They mean holding in place, referring to someone who holds a position in the absence of a higher authority.

Starting point is 00:10:07 A lieutenant would have been someone acting in the name and authority of the king. In the U.S. Army, Marines, and Air Force, there are second lieutenants and first lieutenants. A big question many people, including many British people, wonder, is why Commonwealth countries pronounce it as lieutenant when there's nothing in the word that would indicate something that sounds like the letter F? The best reason I've heard is that in Old French, the word Lou was actually pronounced luf, and that was the pronunciation that took hold in Britain. The lieutenant pronunciation was used in the American military as late as the 1790s, but eventually fell out a favor.

Starting point is 00:10:47 The next rank is that of captain. Captain comes from the Latin word kaput, meaning head. The term was used to denote the leader of a unit or head of a company of soldiers. While the origin of the word is the same as that of a naval captain, a captain in the Navy and a captain in the Army have totally different equivalent ranks. A naval captain is the equivalent of an army colonel. An army captain is normally the head of a company that usually consists of roughly 1 to 200 soldiers.

Starting point is 00:11:18 Above a captain is a major. The origin of major is very straightforward. It comes from the Latin term major, meaning greater or senior. It was originally used to denote the senior subordinate of a colonel. A major can lead a company or they could be an executive officer in a larger unit such as a regiment or even a brigade. Above major is colonel. The U.S. military has lieutenant colonels and just colonels. The word originates from the Italian word colonelho, which means column of soldiers.

Starting point is 00:11:51 The title refers to the commander of a column or regiment in the 16th and 17th centuries. The word kernel has a very odd pronunciation given how the word is spelled. The reason has to do with the fact that the Italian word came to English via French. The French had originally changed the spelling of the Italian word to Coronel, C-O-R-O-N-E-L, and that's also how it's spelled in Spanish. For whatever reason, in English, the original Italian spelling was taken, but the pronunciation was pronounced in the French manner, which had a completely different spelling. And by the way, Colonel Sanders, the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, did not hold that

Starting point is 00:12:32 rank in the military. Rather, he was a Kentucky colonel, an honorary title bestowed by the state of Kentucky. A colonel will usually be in charge of a regiment. Finally, above colonel is general. The word general is derived from the Latin word generalis, meaning pertaining to all or universal. This term came into use as a rank in the French army and was adopted by the British Army and and subsequently by the American Army to denote the highest level of command. There are currently five ranks of generals on the books in the United States.

Starting point is 00:13:05 In order of seniority from lowest to highest is a brigadier general, a major general, a lieutenant general, a general, and a general of the army. And if you remember back to my episode, there's also a sixth rank of general known as General of the Armies, but it's rarely, rarely used. And note that while a major outrower,

Starting point is 00:13:26 ranks a lieutenant. A lieutenant general outranks a major general. And Germany in the 19th century used to have a rank known as a colonel general. In this episode, I focused primarily on army ranks, which are very similar to ranks and other branches of the military, save for the Navy. Naval ranks and traditions are very different, and I'll save those for a future episode. As with many things in our world, military traditions date back centuries, which is why many military ranks with odd spellings or pronunciations still exist today. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiefer. I wanted to give a big thanks to everyone who supports a show on Patreon. Your support helps me put out a new show

Starting point is 00:14:18 every day. And if you're interested in Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise, Patreon is currently the only place where it's available. And if you'd like to talk to other, listeners of the show and get notified to future episodes and projects, please join my Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The History of Military Ranks

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.