List of honorary British knights and dames
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Many people have been created honorary knights or dames by the British crown. There are also those that have been appointed to two comparable orders, the Order of Merit and the Order of the Companions of Honour, and those that have had conferred on them the decoration of the Royal Victorian Chain; none of these carries pre-nominal styles.
Honorary awards
Use of pre-nominal styles and post-nominal initials
An honorary award is one made to a person who is not a citizen of a Commonwealth realm. He or she cannot use the pre-nominal style of 'Sir' or 'Dame', but can use the post-nominal letters (after their names), subject to the prevailing conventions in his or her own country. If such a person later acquires citizenship of a Commonwealth realm, then any honorary awards usually become substantive, and in the case of knights and dames they can begin to use the pre-nominal styles. However this is not automatic. The person must be dubbed by the King or his delegate in order to be entitled to use the pre-nominal style. If the knighthood is in an order which has a special class for honorary knighthoods, a change to a regular class of knighthoods is also required.
Loss of citizenship of a British realm
Citizens of a country which was a full part of the British Empire or Commonwealth when they received the honour (i.e. who were British subjects at the time), were substantive knights or dames, not honorary.
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