Doctor (title)

Doctor means teacher in Latin. It has had continuous use as an honored academic title for over a millennium in Europe, the Americas, former European colonies and now most of the world. However, as a popularly used noun in English-speaking and many other countries, the noun doctor now usually refers to a medical doctor or physician.

Medical usage of the noun doctor

In the United States and Canada, in common usage, the noun doctor is most often used for all forms of physicians and surgeons, including internists, pediatricians, gynecologists, and all the rest of the surgical and nonsurgical specialists who hold M.D. degrees and practice medicine of any form. It is also used in this sense for osteopathic physicians (whose medical degree is D.O.). In a specific context or setting that does not include physicians, doctor is sometimes used as a noun to refer to a veterinarian, dentist, optometrist, podiatrist, or clinical psychologist (whose degrees are usually D.V.M., D.D.S., O.D., D.P.M., Ph.D.), though less often in a context which included physicians.

In the United Kingdom, Australia, and other areas whose culture was more recently linked to England, popular usage of doctor implies medical doctor even more exclusively. This is partly because the term physician is applied primarily to the specialists who are called internists in the U.S. and is hence not available as an all-inclusive term for medical doctor or surgeon. On the other hand, surgeons in England were traditionally not considered medical doctors and were addressed as Mister.

There are many other countries, such as France, where doctor nearly always is synonymous with medical doctor.

Academic doctorates and usage of Doctor as a title of address

In the United States and Canada, as well as most of the rest of the world, all medical doctors, physicians, surgeons, and many other health professionals with the doctorate degrees listed above are customarily addressed as Doctor (e.g., Doctor Smith or Dr. Smith).

Many advanced academic degrees not pertaining to the health professions are also referred to as doctorates. The most common is the Ph.D., which is the highest earned degree in many academic disciplines in both the sciences and the humanities. Similarly advanced professional degrees in the two other traditional professions of the West (law and divinity) are also referred to as doctorates.

In North America and much of the world, holders of these degrees are sometimes addressed as Doctor. This is quite common in an academic or educational setting such as a university or secondary school, and less common in the rest of society where the educational background of the individual is not salient. However, even in an academic setting, one rarely hears doctor or doctors as a noun referring to one or more professors, Ph.D.s or teachers; the title professor usually supersedes the title doctor.

While the Juris Doctor or J.D. is a professional doctorate, by custom and legal convention lawyers do not use the title. Laywers who hold another doctorate such as the J.S.D. (Doctor of Juristic Science), L.Sc.D. (Doctor of the Science of Law), or the LL.D. (Doctor of Laws) may use the title of doctor.

However, usage of doctor as a title also varies by culture. The title Doctor (abbreviated Dr.) is used in the United States and Germany for most people holding a doctorate. In some other countries, such as France, it is generally not used except for physicians and thus has become a synonym for "physician". In certain countries, for members of certain professions, the title of doctor may be used even when the academic qualification of doctorate is not held: for instance, in Italy, for holders of a Laureate.

Other usages

In Roman Catholicism, a Doctor of the Church is an eminent theologian (e.g. Thomas Aquinas) from whose teachings the whole Christian church is held to have derived great advantage. This is not an academic title but reflects the most ancient sense of the word as "teacher".