teachers' personal lives / ''Madam''

[June Ewing]

> Carol responds:
> And yet Madame Maxime, the French witch who's headmistress of
Beauxbatons, isn't married. It seems that both "Madam" and "Madame"
function as titles of respect that a professional woman (or even a
glorified seamstress like Madam Malkin or a pub owner like Madam
Rosmerta, who combines "Madam" with her first name) can choose to
use. It seems to function something like "Ms.", allowing a woman to
hide her marital status, except that it adds a hint of increased
social status as well. OTOH, happy housewives like Molly Weasley are
addressed as "Mrs." (with no indication that the term is derogatory)
and young, unmarried girls are addressed as "Miss" by their teachers,
just as the boys are addressed as "Mr." (I think it would have been
"Master" in Victorian England and maybe even into the 1950s, at least
for Muggles, but the Wizards seem to have a slightly different
> terminology.
>
> Most likely, JKR didn't think it out. She may have started with the
nicely alliterative "Madam Malkin" and gone from there. In any case,
the use of "Madam" extends beyond Hogwarts into the British WW in
> general.


June:
I looked up the meaning for Madame:
Madam, or madame, is a polite title used for women which, in English,
is the equivalent of Mrs. or Ms., and is often found abbreviated as
ma'am, and less frequently as “ma’m”. It is derived from the
French madame, which means "my lady", the feminine form of lord; the
plural of ma dame in this sense is mes dames. The French is in turn
derived from the Latin mea domina, meaning "my mistress (of the
house)".[1] "Madam" may also refer to a woman who owns or runs a
brothel,[2][3] though the abbreviated form "ma'am" is not used in
this respect.

Of course we will presume that the latter holds no meanings in the
WW lol.