Ranks
The ordinary Spanish nobility is divided into six ranks. From highest to lowest, these are: Duque (Duke), Marqués (Marquess), Conde (Count), Vizconde (Viscount), Barón (Baron), and Señor (Lord) (as well as the feminine forms of these titles).
Nobility descends from the original male who was raised to the nobility or recognized as belonging to the hereditary nobility to all legitimate descendants, male and female, in the male line. Thus, most persons who are legally noble, hold no noble title.
A grandeeship ennobles its recipient and, although usually conferred with a title, need not be.
Read more about this topic: Spanish Nobility
Famous quotes containing the word ranks:
“It has lately been drawn to your correspondent’s attention that, at social gatherings, she is not the human magnet she would be. Indeed, it turns out that as a source of entertainment, conviviality, and good fun, she ranks somewhere between a sprig of parsley and a single ice- skate. It would appear, from the actions of the assembled guests, that she is about as hot company as a night nurse.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)
“Every woman who vacates a place in the teachers’ ranks and enters an unusual line of work, does two excellent things: she makes room for someone waiting for a place and helps to open a new vocation for herself and other women.”
—Frances E. Willard (1839–1898)
“Money is a singular thing. It ranks with love as man’s greatest source of joy. And with death as his greatest source of anxiety. Over all history it has oppressed nearly all people in one of two ways: either it has been abundant and very unreliable, or reliable and very scarce.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)