Goodman (title)
masculine social title
Goodman was once a polite term of address, used where Mister (Mr.) would be used today. A man addressed by this title was, however, of a lesser social rank than a man addressed as Mister. Compare Goodwife.
The terms were used in England and Puritan New England. They are perhaps best known today as the forms of address used in Arthur Miller's historical fiction The Crucible, and in Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Young Goodman Brown".
In his 1577 work, Description of England, William Harrison wrote:
"The third and last sort is named the yeomanry, of whom and their sequel, the labourers and artificers, I have said somewhat even now. Whereto I add that they may not be called masters and gentlemen, but goodmen, as Goodman Smith, Goodman Coot, Goodman Cornell, Goodman Mascall, Goodman Cockswet, etc.: and in matters of law these and the like are called thus, Giles Jewd, yeoman; Edward Mountford, yeoman; James Cocke, yeoman; Harry Butcher, yeoman, etc.; by which addition they are exempt from the vulgar and common sorts.
“Goodman (title)” enters the record as masculine social title. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Goodman, title and masculine can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Goodman (title)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Goodman, title and masculine provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 3, 2023. The linked authority identifier is Q5583448. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1577.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Goodman (title)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.