What could you call journeymen....

[Rosemary Tea]

I wander way away from history and yet keep elements. I have guilds with apprentice systems but also trade houses with monopoly systems over such things as, important to the plot, a healing herb. They grew so powerful in the first couple years after the Great Forgetting that their minted coins became one of the primary standards of coinage throughout the region, which of course, is putting them at odds with rulers of several cities and other trade houses that mint coins, including their home base city of Aprelêu.

Interesting. Did you just make this up, or did you consciously model it after the Greek colony of Lydia? Which had an economy based around trade in the plant silphium, which appeared on Lydian coins. It was such a valuable medicinal plant - and not possible to cultivate on any wide scale - that it was ultimately harvested to extinction.

It's all interweaving into a much more complicated tale than I originally planned, LOL.

All of these mechanics are threaded into the background of a very personal story of revenge, of course.

That's how those things work, isn't it? Same here, pretty much. Not that I started with a revenge story, but it was something about that simple, and it led to all of this.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Never heard of Lydia. The healing herb, in this fantasy case, is just one minor piece of their monopolistic power structure.

 

[S J Lee]

 

[Rosemary Tea]

And now, to address some posts individually:

Do you know of any that specifically mean what a master is to an apprentice? And that do not also have a more general meaning, like schoolteacher, or an unfortunate connection with slavery?

First, the relationship varied by time, place, and even individual circumstance. It's not like there was a rule book, and we're talking about over a thousand years and a whole continent. So, plenty of room for variance. Almost everything you read is going to be drawn from late medieval / early modern England. Practices and customs on the Continent were different. OK, that's enough of that....

Very informative post, but it skates over what I was really asking. Apprentice is a specific word that describes what the apprentice is to the master, but there doesn't seem to be such a specific word for the other side of the relationship: what the master is to the apprentice. Except master.

Taken with other meanings of master, though, that word implies that the master is the apprentice's owner. Which may have been more or less so in some places, some times, but that's not the meaning I want to convey in my work. While I am using the contractual binding part (and can do a bit more interesting stuff with it when magic is involved), there's a clear distinction between an apprentice and a servant. The apprentice has chosen to enter the contract, it isn't forced. While the apprentice does work, they're in the apprenticeship primarily to learn. The master is a teacher, a mentor, and yes, an employer, but not an owner.

I'm wondering if there's a word in any language that sums that up.

 

[skip.knox]

>I'm wondering if there's a word in any language that sums that up.
Short answer: no. Or maybe yes.
The reason there's no word for it is becuase it never happened, afaik. Apprenticeship was a contractual relationship and was exercised between the parents of a young person and a master craftsman. The apprentice himself (or herself) did not sign the agreement. The parents did. So it wasn't entered into voluntarily.

An apprentice was emphatically not a servant because a servant was merely a servus. Someone who served. They might be paid or they might not; the matter of payment was incidental to the status of service. There is a fascinating history behind the term servus, somewhat famously (among medieval historians, at least) addressed by Marc Bloch.

A master was not an apprentice's owner; however, an apprentice was very much under the power of a master for the duration of the contact. The best analogy would be to say the apprentice became part of the familgia of the master, who was paterfamilias to the apprentice. If you make a clear distinction between apprentice and servant, you'd be quite in line with historical precedent. A servant serves. An apprentice learns.

So, if you are looking for a word to describe a young person who has entered into the household of the master of a particular craft, who is contractually obligated to that master, and whose master in turn is contractually obligated to teach the craft to the youngster, then yes, there is such a term. That term is apprentice.

 

[Rosemary Tea]

As for the original concern, I'm not sure I fully understand what is sought.

Thought I spelled it out clearly in the first post. This whole conversation grew out of a mere search for an alternative word.

Of course, mages are also a creation of fantasy, heh. And maybe in your world the system of mages is indeed a limited, closed hierarchy that is rather rigid and controlled, or at least some mage guilds exist that operate this way. (I've often found the marriage of magic with such rigid institutionalization to be rather problematic, but this can be a good or a bad thing depending on how one approaches it, heh.)

Yes, in my setting, the mages' guild controls all magic. No one may learn it without being apprenticed to a mage, and no one may teach it without authorization. Which is quite possible to do because the ability to do magic comes from learning it, it's not innate.

But they're an interesting mix of rigid and flexible, hierarchical and egalitarian, and while they are in some ways very strict and disciplined, they're also very free, in some ways.

So maybe you need the apprentice-journeyman-master rule.

For the mages, definitely. I've been operating on the assumption that trades would work similarly. At the very least, there are apprentices in the trades. But I suppose their path after apprenticeship could be varied. Maybe some of them are under a guild with an apprentice-journeyman-master structure, while others aren't.

In this case, I wonder whether finding a more specific terminology—i.e., ignoring the need for a generic term for such magical laborers—would benefit your project.

You mean, a word for journeyman that only applies to mages?

Perhaps.

 

[Rosemary Tea]

So, if you are looking for a word to describe a young person who has entered into the household of the master of a particular craft, who is contractually obligated to that master, and whose master in turn is contractually obligated to teach the craft to the youngster, then yes, there is such a term. That term is apprentice.

I'm not looking for a term for apprentice. I'm looking for a term for the master, specifically in relation to apprentice. What is the master to the apprentice, if we don't use the word master to describe that relationship?

I've been trying out teacher and mentor. But those aren't words specific to an apprenticeship situation. I'm wondering if some language, somewhere, some time, has come up with a word that is.

 

[Rosemary Tea]

The really interesting stuff often comes from adding a twist.

One aspect worth looking at is who gets to be admitted as master. I mentioned marriage as one prerequisite. That got complicated during the Reformation--the Reformed journeyman wants to settle in a Catholic town and can't find a partner.

Another big roadblock was urban versus rural. If you were a journeyman shoemaker out in villages, then you weren't allowed into the city, except as a cobbler (repairs only). Many very bitter complaints on that score. It could catch a fellow off guard; for example, the joiner who worked for a clock maker. He did plenty of joinery, but for the wrong master.

There's room there for something with magic. Studying with the wrong sort of master. Or in the wrong place. Maybe mages don't allow marriage (like medieval clerics). In general, raising barriers like that creates room for conflict, and conflict is the heart of story.

Those kinds of conflict are outside the scope of my current focus, but it's fodder for thought! Perhaps something like that is brewing outside the bubble my characters are in. There could be a whiff of it, even if it's not happening to them personally.

 

[pmmg]

Well, I hesitate to post this up, but the term 'man' itself is at its inception was not to mean males as much as all of mankind, and when used in this way, as it is in journeyman, it is a gender neutral term.

If you are looking to suppose a world where, due to the inclusion of roles more likely shared by Men and Women, the term Werman would not likely have fallen out of fashion. This would be very difficult to script in after the fact without it having just a shoe-horned appearance, but perhaps it would not be so prominent as to grate. I would personally stick with Journeyman, but I am likely a minority on that in today's world.

An alternate term for master might be mentor, or head, or lead....such as lead crafter or head of the shop in the case of a craftsmen.

 

[Mad Swede]

I'm not looking for a term for apprentice. I'm looking for a term for the master, specifically in relation to apprentice. What is the master to the apprentice, if we don't use the word master to describe that relationship?

I've been trying out teacher and mentor. But those aren't words specific to an apprenticeship situation. I'm wondering if some language, somewhere, some time, has come up with a word that is.

I think you're forgetting one important word: craftsman. The youngster would be apprenticed to a master craftsman, to learn the craft or trade. The terms of the apprenticeship were (at least in the UK) formalised in an indenture of retainer, which was a legally binding contract stating the obligations of both the apprentice and the master craftsman. Sometimes there would be a payment to the master craftsman, and sometimes the master craftsman would pay a sort of small wage to the apprentice. In its most basic form such an indenture of retainer stated that the master craftsman was obliged to teach his apprentice(s) the trade (and this usually included not only the craft skllls but also the business/financial side of things) and the apprentices were obliged to learn the trade and to work for the master craftsman for a given number of years after their training was complete. Implicit in this was that the apprentices would learn to read and write if they could not already do so. In practice, the apprenticeship was also a way of building up a network of trade contacts for when the apprentice set out on their own, and it could also be a way of meeting a future wife (or husband, for those trades where women worked).

 

[FifthView]

Thought I spelled it out clearly in the first post. This whole conversation grew out of a mere search for an alternative word.

Well I meant I'm unsure of the thrust of the term you are seeking.

Is it merely what the general populace calls these craftsmen, a generic term and/or title?

• "Yes, journeyman."
  
• "I've summoned a journeyman to repair this."
• "Journeyman Deriol came a day late, something entirely new to him, and so I was worried he had suffered some dreadful thing."
  
• "Journeymen wandered north and south, east and west on the streets of Uldaruma, seeking employment, but in those days none was to be found."

Is it a strictly regimented term, in the way First Sergeant, Chief Operating Officer, Slave Master might be official titles in a rigid hierarchy?

• "Know your place, Journeyman Heckitor!"
• "For all my life, I had been merely 'the apprentice.' Now I had ascended to Journeyman. This afforded me much more freedom—and much less. I could no longer disappear for hours while pretending to complete some task. No, I had strict appointments, and my master was an impatient man. Keeping up appearances. However, I received more payment for services than I ever had before, and my master permitted me a full day free every week to do as I wished. I also no longer had to wash his smallclothes."
• "Today, you become my apprentice. If you survive and learn what I have to teach, after many years have passed you may become Journeyman. But leave all thought of advancement out of your mind, for there is much work to be done before such dreams are entertained."

Is it simply a placeholder for describing someone no longer an apprentice but also not a master in his or her own right?

• "Neither master nor any longer an apprentice, I had become something indeterminate. I now managed my own daily affairs but still owed my master the coin he deserved for my years of training. Clients expected me to answer all their questions on my own but required the assurance of my master's authority, even so. I had become a journeyman, that was all."

You mean, a word for journeyman that only applies to mages?

I meant, if it is the middle case here—a term used to put someone in his or her place, as it were, or a very specific set of controls within a hierarchical system—then you might have an easier time finding the term you want if you forget the first case above, that of the more generic term used by the populace for tradesmen.

It might be something specific to mages within such a system, or maybe it would be some new term created or a repurposed term from Earth. Latin, for instance, has the term artifex which might be interesting. Artifex Rosemary. "Know your place, artifex."

I found that term via 690. Agent. Mawson, C.O. Sylvester. 1922. Roget’s International Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases —did not know until today that an older version of Roget's International Thesaurus, the best thesaurus ever made, is online and searchable. (Start at Index Guide and search down.) I have the 7th edition in paperback but am glad enough to use this online version.

There was another page for the idea "servant." (The thesaurus is organized around ideas, pretty much, or broader abstractions.) That page was here: 746. Servant.. This page is linked from the index term journeyman but also the term apprentice. Apprentice also links to this: 541. Learner.. Interesting that "apprentice" links to both, the idea of servant and learner. Anywho. Just some ideas for you.

 

[Rosemary Tea]

Thanks for clarifiying FifthView . To sum it up:

Well I meant I'm unsure of the thrust of the term you are seeking.

Is it merely what the general populace calls these craftsmen, a generic term and/or title?

• "Yes, journeyman."
  
• "I've summoned a journeyman to repair this."
• "Journeyman Deriol came a day late, something entirely new to him, and so I was worried he had suffered some dreadful thing."
  
• "Journeymen wandered north and south, east and west on the streets of Uldaruma, seeking employment, but in those days none was to be found."

Yes, this.

Is it simply a placeholder for describing someone no longer an apprentice but also not a master in his or her own right?

• "Neither master nor any longer an apprentice, I had become something indeterminate. I now managed my own daily affairs but still owed my master the coin he deserved for my years of training. Clients expected me to answer all their questions on my own but required the assurance of my master's authority, even so. I had become a journeyman, that was all."

This, too.

Is it a strictly regimented term, in the way First Sergeant, Chief Operating Officer, Slave Master might be official titles in a rigid hierarchy?

• "Know your place, Journeyman Heckitor!"
• "For all my life, I had been merely 'the apprentice.' Now I had ascended to Journeyman. This afforded me much more freedom—and much less. I could no longer disappear for hours while pretending to complete some task. No, I had strict appointments, and my master was an impatient man. Keeping up appearances. However, I received more payment for services than I ever had before, and my master permitted me a full day free every week to do as I wished. I also no longer had to wash his smallclothes."
• "Today, you become my apprentice. If you survive and learn what I have to teach, after many years have passed you may become Journeyman. But leave all thought of advancement out of your mind, for there is much work to be done before such dreams are entertained."

But not so much this, at least, not in the way that the tone of these particular examples conveys. While there is some degree of hierarchy, it's not served up with a "Know your place!" attitude. And it's taken as a given that every apprentice will advance, provided that they put in the work and learn their lessons. What exactly that advancement means, now that I think about it, is quite different among the mages from in the trades, but that's another topic.

I meant, if it is the middle case here—a term used to put someone in his or her place, as it were, or a very specific set of controls within a hierarchical system—then you might have an easier time finding the term you want if you forget the first case above, that of the more generic term used by the populace for tradesmen.

It's not really that. The real hierarchical difference, if you can call it that, between a journeyman and a master (or a journeyman mage and a full mage) is that the journeyman is less experienced, doesn't qualify for guild membership (doesn't have voting rights and can't serve in guild leadership, for instance), and can't take an apprentice. (Full mages have some other qualifications to meet before they can take an apprentice, so not all do qualify for that, but the other descriptors do apply.) And full mages have say over where they go and what work they do, while journeyman mages have to go wherever they're assigned, like military personnel.

But a full mage does not have direct authority over a journeyman, unless it's through a specific relationship: ie the mage is the journeyman's field work supervisor. Even that is more an advisory relationship than an authoritarian one. It's essentially the same as the relationship between a graduate student and the advisor overseeing their project.

So, journeyman describes a certain position, and I suppose you could call it a kind of hierarchy, but it's not as hierarchical as you seem to be envisioning.

 

[FifthView]

But not so much this, at least, not in the way that the tone of these particular examples conveys. While there is some degree of hierarchy, it's not served up with a "Know your place!" attitude.

Ah, ok. I'd been thrown off by this earlier comment:

Especially since "Journeyman Fifthview" is what the full mages would call you if you were a journeyman mage (at least, in front of others they would. In a private conversation, they might just use your name.) It's a title you would be addressed with by the people who rank above you. Other journeymen - your peers - would just call you by your name.

...so it felt as if you were searching for a "know your place" sort of title/ranking even if the tone wasn't so much "Know your place!" Your peers might address you by name, but those "above you" would call you Journeyman So-and-so, especially in public where keeping up the status quo might be important.

 

[Rosemary Tea]

Ah, ok. I'd been thrown off by this earlier comment:



...so it felt as if you were searching for a "know your place" sort of title/ranking even if the tone wasn't so much "Know your place!" Your peers might address you by name, but those "above you" would call you Journeyman So-and-so, especially in public where keeping up the status quo might be important.

Yes... I'm not saying there's no hierarchy. It's just a softer hierarchy than you apparently interpreted it as.

Formalities are a thing among mages. And to some degree in the wider culture, but the mages are real sticklers for it. In public, anyway. In private, they're not really any more formal than anyone else.

 

[Prince of Spires]

I'm not looking for a term for apprentice. I'm looking for a term for the master, specifically in relation to apprentice. What is the master to the apprentice, if we don't use the word master to describe that relationship?

I'm not sure I understand what's wrong with the word master. Yes, there are instances where it describes ownership, but there's also plenty where it doesn't. A master - apprentice relationship is fairly common and I don't think I've ever seen it used in a way where the master is the owner of the apprentice. Unless you have a lot of slavery in your world, and the term master is used to describe ownership, then I don't see a problem with it and I would simply use master. Trying to shoehorn in a different term while you have a perfectly fine one feels silly and confusing to me.

As for the actual teaching vs being a servant part, I think that will depend very heavily on the master in question. skip.knox already mentioned something similar earlier in the thread. Each master will have his own way of teaching, and historically very little could be said about that (since the master was quite literally the master of his own workplace). Some might start instructing clearly on day one following a very clear curiculum, but many others would simply give the apprentice simple chores and assume that the aprentice would pick things up by watching.

And where does a servant's job stop and an apprentice begin? Sweeping a blacksmith, fetching water and tending a fire sound like the sort of thing an apprentice blacksmith would do, even if cleaning is a servant's job.

 

[Rosemary Tea]

I'm not sure I understand what's wrong with the word master. Yes, there are instances where it describes ownership, but there's also plenty where it doesn't. A master - apprentice relationship is fairly common and I don't think I've ever seen it used in a way where the master is the owner of the apprentice. Unless you have a lot of slavery in your world, and the term master is used to describe ownership, then I don't see a problem with it and I would simply use master. Trying to shoehorn in a different term while you have a perfectly fine one feels silly and confusing to me.

That's exactly it: this is a world with an uncomfortable history with slavery. It probably is still going on in some parts, but in the country where this is set, slavery was abolished a couple centuries ago (except as punishment for crime, but that's a quite distinct category). From before that time, though, there's plenty of holdover, including legal codes (both written into the general law and in guilds' bylaws) that are intended to draw a sharp distinction between an apprentice and a slave. There were once problems in some quarters with the distinction being blurred, shall we say.

If I can come up with an alternate word for master, in the context of apprenticeship, that would fit the parameters nicely.

As for the actual teaching vs being a servant part, I think that will depend very heavily on the master in question. skip.knox already mentioned something similar earlier in the thread. Each master will have his own way of teaching, and historically very little could be said about that (since the master was quite literally the master of his own workplace). Some might start instructing clearly on day one following a very clear curiculum, but many others would simply give the apprentice simple chores and assume that the aprentice would pick things up by watching.

And where does a servant's job stop and an apprentice begin? Sweeping a blacksmith, fetching water and tending a fire sound like the sort of thing an apprentice blacksmith would do, even if cleaning is a servant's job.

It's context that matters. And class. Generally, a servant is a lower class than the one they serve. (I know there are exceptions to that rule, but this is in the big picture.) Apprentices, though, are the same social class as the master. After all, the apprentice is expected to be in the master's position someday. A servant is not.

And then there's the expectations and goals, which is what I mean by context. For an apprentice, the goal, and the expectation, is to learn the trade. Even if they do some of the same work as a servant, the inherent meaning is different. For a servant, there's no such expectation. Their only goal is to do their job and earn their wages (or whatever they're being paid in).

 

[Mad Swede]

That's exactly it: this is a world with an uncomfortable history with slavery. It probably is still going on in some parts, but in the country where this is set, slavery was abolished a couple centuries ago (except as punishment for crime, but that's a quite distinct category). From before that time, though, there's plenty of holdover, including legal codes (both written into the general law and in guilds' bylaws) that are intended to draw a sharp distinction between an apprentice and a slave. There were once problems in some quarters with the distinction being blurred, shall we say.

If I can come up with an alternate word for master, in the context of apprenticeship, that would fit the parameters nicely.

In some respects you've tied yourself into an unneccesary linguistic knot, simply because in the context you're describing a master of some craft or profession is exactly that. A master of the craft, not a slave master. Maybe you could use the German word meister? Or maybe the Swedish mästare? Both are a specific term for the master of a craft. Or possibly your current rank here in this forum, maester?

 

[Rosemary Tea]

In some respects you've tied yourself into an unneccesary linguistic knot, simply because in the context you're describing a master of some craft or profession is exactly that. A master of the craft, not a slave master. Maybe you could use the German word meister? Or maybe the Swedish mästare? Both are a specific term for the master of a craft. Or possibly your current rank here in this forum, maester?

Good idea.

The English word master does share its meaning with slave master, which is what makes me think along those lines.

And then there's the relationship between master and apprentice: it would be nice to convey that the master is, above all, a teacher and mentor to the apprentice. Which can, of course, be conveyed in the story telling, but if it could also be described in one word....

 

[skip.knox]

I like maester also. It has a fairly common currency in fantasy and is nearly always tied to magic.

BTW, historically there was a sharp awareness of the differences between apprentice and servant. In some legal records we see complaints lodged by the parents of the apprentice claiming that the master (or his wife) treated the youth "more as a servant than an apprentice." That was said without further explanation, implying all concerned knew the differences quite well.

 

[Mad Swede]

Good idea.

The English word master does share its meaning with slave master, which is what makes me think along those lines.

And then there's the relationship between master and apprentice: it would be nice to convey that the master is, above all, a teacher and mentor to the apprentice. Which can, of course, be conveyed in the story telling, but if it could also be described in one word....

Wait one. I know I'm Swedish, but master as in slave master is a noun, where as master as in master craftsman is an adjective or sometimes a verb. And so they don't have the same meaning. I'm not sure you need to worry about using the English word, at least not if you describe your mages as master mages.