Inheritance of Titles
Their title differed from the higher noblemen's titles in that it was inherited by all the zeman's children equally in each generation. Their ratio in society therefore did not decline as the population grew. A male zeman's children, sons as well as daughters, were all born zemans regardless of the status of their mother (when a female commoner married a zeman, her status was effectively raised). A female zemianka who married a commoner retained her noble status for the rest of her life, but it did not transfer to her husband and her children were born commoners.
Read more about this topic: Zeman (nobleman)
Famous quotes containing the words inheritance of, inheritance and/or titles:
“I call it our collective inheritance of isolation. We inherit isolation in the bones of our lives. It is passed on to us as sure as the shape of our noses and the length of our legs. When we are young, we are taught to keep to ourselves for reasons we may not yet understand. As we grow up we become the “men who never cry” and the “women who never complain.” We become another generation of people expected not to bother others with our problems.”
—Paula C. Lowe (20th century)
“It is very difficult to be wholly joyous or wholly sad on this earth. The comic, when it is human, soon takes upon itself a face of pain; and some of our griefs ... have their source in weaknesses which must be recognized with smiling compassion as the common inheritance of us all.”
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)
“We have to be despised by somebody whom we regard as above us, or we are not happy; we have to have somebody to worship and envy, or we cannot be content. In America we manifest this in all the ancient and customary ways. In public we scoff at titles and hereditary privilege, but privately we hanker after them, and when we get a chance we buy them for cash and a daughter.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)