Victorians beat us to pretentious job titles … ask any couranteer

IT IS a tactic to boost one’s kudos that is usually associated with ultra-competitive 21st-century society.

But Victorians gave themselves pompous job titles too, a study by the University of Exeter has discovered.

Job titles such as hygiene technician (cleaner), media distribution officer (paper boy) and communications executives (call-centre workers) are not a 21st- or even 20th-century invention.

Pretentious job descriptions date back to the 19th century, when an entire lexicon of outlandish titles was created to promote trades and inflate the importance of tradesmen, the research shows. Among the exotic executive roles created was a “tripocoptontic perruquier”, a person who made washable wigs; a “delineator of the natatorial science”, a swimming teacher; and the exotic-sounding “couranteer”, a journalist.

Dr Alun Withey, a historian at the University of Exeter, said the outlandish job titles were designed to make tradesmen stand out from the crowd.

He said: “Eighteenth-century advertising was all about ‘polite’ language, and cajoling your customers into purchasing things, without mentioning anything so uncouth as money. Even then, though, some products began to be given pseudoscientific names, to appeal to popular interest in science and technology in the Enlightenment, and sellers stressed their credentials as suppliers to the king, or selling by special patent.

“In the 19th century things seemed to go a stage further, and individuals began to assume some often outlandish and fantastic-sounding job titles. One obvious reason was to make them stand out from the crowd. Assuming a highfalutin job or product title made sometimes-boring jobs leap off the page. So why just sell ‘shaving soap’ when you could call it ‘Hypophagon’?

‘Who wouldn’t want to be taught to swim by a professor of the natatorial art rather than a swimming teacher?’

“Some cheekier individuals even seemed to take on professional job titles without the bother of going to university to get them. There were, for example, a number of ‘professors’ of various occupations. Who, after all, wouldn’t want to be taught to swim by a ‘professor of the natatorial art’ rather than a plain swimming instructor?”

Other grandiose titles included “antigropelos maker”, which means a maker of waterproof trousers; an “idrotabolic hat maker”, a person who makes hats with holes to let the air in; a “bibliopole” or bookseller; and a “manciple”, which meant a servant.