Major
Major is a
military rank denoting an
officer of mid-level command status. It is usually immediately superior to the rank of
Captain and immediately subordinate to the rank of
Lieutenant Colonel. In most comparative military scales a Major is ranked as a "Level 4" (O-4) officer although some systems (among them the
NATO rank codes) list a Major as a Level 3. The naval equivalent to a Major is, in some nations, the rank of
Lieutenant Commander.
The rank of Major originated in
English as a suffix to certain other military positions, usually to denote a more senior status than others of the same position. The most common usage of the word Major in a rank and the first recorded in English (1643), was in the term "
Sergeant-Major", the third-in-command of a
regiment. In several European
navies, the rank of Major was used in the term "
Pilot-Major" to denote the senior deck officer of a vessel in contrast to the
Captain (or
Captain General) who was typically an Army officer, with little naval knowledge, assigned to command the mission on which a vessel was embarked.
By the time of the
English Civil War, Major had become its own rank and was assigned to mid-level officers on the
battlefield and was most often used by those who served as
aides to a superior
General.
The rank of
Major General arose during the
18th century, and was a shortening of the rank
Sergeant Major General.
By the
19th century, the rank of Major was being used by nearly every military in the western and colonial world. It quickly developed into a senior staff position and was seen as the first of the "command" or "field" ranks, in contrast to the rank of
Captain and below which were viewed as "company ranks".
The rank of Major may still be found in its original form as a suffix (with or without a hyphen), to denote an officer more senior to the base rank. Examples as the ranks of
Adjutant-Major and
Colonel-Major. It is also still commonly used in the rank of
Sergeant Major, and is also used in ceremonial appointments such as
Drum-Major and
Pipe-Major.
It is similarly still used as a prefix for the General officer rank of
Major-General, which is similarly used in many other languages (e.g. Generaal-Majoor in
Dutch).
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Major (
Canada)
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Major (
Germany)
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Major (
United Kingdom)
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Major (
United States)
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Major (
Sweden)
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Commandant (
France)
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Commandant (
Ireland)
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Sojwa (
North Korea)
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Soryong (
South Korea)
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Bojnik (
Croatia)
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Sturmbannführer (
Nazi Germany)
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Comparative military ranks*
British Army officer rank insignia*
U.S. Army officer rank insignia*
Swedish Army Rank Insignia*
Mayor near-homophone, same etymology, civilian semantics
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Etymology on line
