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A Non-gender specific name for Yeoman?


assault

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OK, player characters in my game are either members of the gentry, or members of the social class below them.

 

At the moment I am calling the lower class the Yeomanry. But what do you call the members of that class that aren't male?

 

Think Jeeves and Wooster, or less dumb versions of this.

 

What do you call a female"yeoman"?

 

Or non-male, whatever.

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You have some possibilities:

 

1) You can use the informal U.S. Navy term used during World War I and World War II, which was "Yeomanettes" even though their official title was still "Yeoman" (YN).

 

2) You can make up your own that are gender neutral such as, "Yeopen" that loosely combines "Yeoman" and "Peon" or "Yeossal" that combines "Yeoman" and "Vassal." 🙂

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Yeo means young, thus Yeoman originally literally meant "young man" before it started taking on other meanings. 

 

If I was going with the idea of gentry as landed estate holders who lack peerage, and wanted a some-status social class below that but above serfs / peasants / no-status people, I would go with the classic term commoners, which is also a gender neutral term.

 

For a step in between gentry and commoners, people who have some land but are poorly integrated into the dominant feudal hierarchy I would go with the term freeholder. I would expect to find such freeholders at the fringes of the nation, in land that was acquired, annexed, or engulfed by an expanding feudal society but not outright conquered and thus was never fully integrated into the vassal / peerage model of the original nation and conquered lands where land was taken and reallocated. 

 

 

 

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Sweden -- and Norway too, I think -- never had a developed serfdom institution. A farmer either owned their land and paid tax -- as a yeoman would -- or rented from a landlord. In Swedish, the first category was mostly called skattebonde, that is "taxed farmer". The second category had different names through the ages, mostly depending on the terms of the lease, like räntebonde ("renting farmer") and torpare ("crofter", renting small farms for short leases).

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An alternative Navy rank for "Yeoman" is "Seaman".

 

You're welcome.

 

"Yeoman" also is a subcategory of "Petty Officer", E-4 to E-6, equivalent to Corporal/Sergeant/Staff Sergeant in landlubber services.  If you go old school, there are "Mate" ranks approximately on the same level as "Yeoman", e.g. Gunner's Mate, Boatswain's Mate, Sailmaker's Mate.  But in general U.S. services are not forward thinking in this regard; Airman, Seaman, Yeoman, Midshipman, etc. are all still in use.

 

 

 

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Retinue?  Retainer?  Vavasour?

 

Are you defining yeoman as one or more of the following:  A freeholder?  Freeholder who holds land in exchange for military service to a knight or other noble?  Middle class servants to a noble?  Common sailors?

 

For the first I'd go with farmer.  Second, retainer.  Third, retinue.  Forth... I'm coming up blank here.

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44 minutes ago, SCUBA Hero said:

Are you defining yeoman as one or more of the following:  A freeholder?  Freeholder who holds land in exchange for military service to a knight or other noble?  Middle class servants to a noble?  Common sailors?

 

Pretty much the first three, although the service in the second case is not necessarily military.

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For both free farmers, rent farmers, and serfs, part or all of the rent or tax would be in the form of corvée -- labor for the landlord or the crown. It might entail upkeep of roads and bridges, work on a magnate's estate at harvest time, or militia duty.

 

That last part was modernized under the indelningsverket ("the allotment system") under the Swedish empire -- in lieu of tax, a village was to equip an infantryman or a cavalryman, and give him a small farm to keep him and his family.

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You could just be totally anachronistic and sanitize it like it was still the early days of political correctness...

 

Yeoperson

Yeopersun  (to avoid "son," as also masculine, I kid you not)

 

If you have multiple races in the setting 

Yeobeing 

 

Or like D&D did with Lizardmen

Yeofolk

 

Or not-draconian-we-swear

Yeoborn

 

You could work from Freeman the same ways as above, or to Dune-ish Fremen, which still contains "men", so hey, Fremyn could be fun.

 

I've read novels were the used Freeholder and shortened it to "Holder" that seemed to flow pretty naturally. 

 

You could make up a word with no etymology, at all, too.

Wir'rin

Voldhn

Quaeoi

Nye 

 

 

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On 7/14/2022 at 7:03 PM, Old Man said:

An alternative Navy rank for "Yeoman" is "Seaman".

 

You're welcome.

 

"Yeoman" also is a subcategory of "Petty Officer", E-4 to E-6, equivalent to Corporal/Sergeant/Staff Sergeant in landlubber services.  If you go old school, there are "Mate" ranks approximately on the same level as "Yeoman", e.g. Gunner's Mate, Boatswain's Mate, Sailmaker's Mate.  But in general U.S. services are not forward thinking in this regard; Airman, Seaman, Yeoman, Midshipman, etc. are all still in use.

 

 

 

 

Yeoman is a rating (or job specialty), not a rank, though in the Navy your rating is frequently part of how your rank is shown - at least while I was still in.

 

FWIW, my father in law was a yeoman (YN).  I was an electronics technician (ET).

 

When I got out as a 3rd class petty officer (E4), my rank was officially Electronics Technician 3rd Class or ET3 - though if I were being addressed by rank informally I would just be called petty officer.

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On 7/14/2022 at 12:18 AM, assault said:

OK, player characters in my game are either members of the gentry, or members of the social class below them.

 

At the moment I am calling the lower class the Yeomanry. But what do you call the members of that class that aren't male?

 

Think Jeeves and Wooster, or less dumb versions of this.

 

What do you call a female"yeoman"?

 

Or non-male, whatever.

by their surname
as I portray 1 of the Yeoman of the guard I am addressed as Yeoman Mitchell( or Yeoman Beast)

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You could also go the roman route.  Romans had 3 basic classes the nobles, citizens and slaves.  Anyone outside the system was a barbarian.  In medieval times the citizens became yeoman, and slaves became the serfs.   

 

 

Universal citizenship is actually a fairly modern concept.   Originally in America you had to own property to be considered a citizen.  I think it was around the time of Andrew Jackson that the idea of “universal” suffrage came into being. Even then it was still limited.   In reality it has only been in the last hundred years that anything even close to universal citizenship even appeared.     
 

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Browsing through the dictionary, "Franklin" appears to be another English term for a free but not noble person. The dictionary definition sounds like it could be equal to either yeoman or gentry. Since I am not going to go haring off on historical research, I suppose you could declare it equal to yeoman.

 

"Freeholder" still sounds best to me, though. My dictionary actually lists that as a synonym or definition of "yeoman."

 

Dean Shomshak

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