Military Digest: As Indian Navy looks to introduce new ranks, a look at foreign origins of Naval ranks

In this week’s column, we discuss how the ranks of the Navy evolved and their origins.

Admiral

This rank originates from the Arab phrase “Amir-al-Bahr”, or the commander of the seas. According to Naval researchers, western sailors may have encountered this word during the Crusades and adopted it with variation in pronunciation. Its evolution is said to have begun with Sicilian sailors who changed it to “Amiral”, followed by Dutch to “Admyrall” in the 14th century. Finally, the English changed it to Admiral in the 16th century.

Commodore

This rank is believed to have been created by the Dutch. Naval researchers believe that faced with a surfeit of Admirals; the Dutch wanted a rank which would take care of a squadron of ships within the fleets commanded by Admirals. The word originates from the Dutch word “commandeur”, which is supposed to be borrowed from the old French “commandeor” or the Spanish “commendador”.

Captain

According to US Navy researchers, the word Captain is derived from the Latin word for head. The Latin word for head of a military unit was “capitaneus”, while in French, it was called “capitain”, which in turn became “capitane” in Middle English.

Commander

This rank comes from the Latin word “commandare”, which means “to give in to one’s hand” or “to give in to one’s charge”. This rank evolved from other terms used to denote an officer junior to Captain, including Sub-captain and Under-captain.

Lieutenant

Lieutenant comes from the French words “lieu” and “tenant”. It means, in its literal sense, one who holds the place for another. Thus, a Lieutenant is supposed to take charge when a senior officer is not present. The rank is believed to have been established in the British Navy in the 16th century.

Petty Officer

The term Petty is derived from the French word “petite” meaning small. This remained an informal word in the British Navy till the early 19th century when it was adopted as a full rank for personnel who assisted the Captain in running the ship. Various other grades were introduced to give inter-alias seniority to petty officers; hence, the other ranks of Chief Petty Officer and Master Chief Petty Officer evolved.

From the above examples, we can see that almost all ranks of the Navy have foreign origins, and this extends to the badges of rank, uniforms, customs and traditions of the Indian Navy.

The same is true for the ranks of the Army, while the Indian Air Force ranks are fashioned on that of the Royal Air Force, which has borrowed terms from the Royal Navy and British Army and created new ranks besides fashioning entirely new ones.

The Army ranks themselves are an interesting study to conduct. A layman can be befuddled as to why a Colonel is pronounced as ‘kernel’ or why a Lieutenant General is senior to Major General when a Major is senior to Lieutenant — more of that in our future columns.