Since when does 'Ms' means divorced?

[Nolim]

By reading another thread i found out that, according to a significant fraction of posters, the title Ms (as opposed to Miss or Mrs) is for divorced women! This is news to me!

For context English is not my first language. When i lived in the states i learned that Ms was invented to have a female title independent of marital status, just like Mr for men. I thought it was a brilliant idea and have used Ms ever since, as did the majority if women i met there.

Have i been self identifying myself as divorced all this time in the uk? I thought that the idea of Ms was to simplify the situation, not to make it more complicated!

"traditionally it was used by divorcees"

No it wasn't.Traditionally divorcees used Mrs Herownfirstname Hisname. So, Mrs John Smith was married to Mr John Smith. Mrs Susan Smith was divorced from Mr John Smith. The Ms meaning divorced thing came about because people just could not get their heads round the idea of women not wanting to be identified by their marital status. So they invented something.

My vet, who is lovely, but very young started off by calling me Mrs wellies, I kept telling him to call me violet, but he just didn't seem to be able to do it.
Eventually I explained that l was not, nor ever had been Mrs anything.
He now calls me ma'am

Sorry, posted too soon.

It was like that because you could not, traditionally, be Miss Susan Smith.

You were Miss Brown if you were the oldest unmarried daughter of a family, even if your name was Susan. Miss Susan if you were the a younger daughter. Then you got married, and became Mrs John Smith. Your younger sister, incidentally, who had been Miss Gertrude, became Miss Brown. When you divorced, you became Mrs Susan Smith.

My brain is full of crap like this. I am very old, and very posh.

In a similar frothy vein, a colleague of mine was crestfallen when the new telephone list came out at work, listing her as Ms Baboons Colleague.

She wanted people to know she was single and felt it was a slight that suggested she was past it (at 32) so she emailed and asked them to change it.

In fairness, there was no consistency. Some of the new staff were referred to as Miss, it's just that the person who made up the list wasn't sure about my colleague so plumped for the neutral form.

The following is completely unrealated to this thread:

Hakluyt i just remembered that watching sense and sensibility ( the movie with huge grant, sorry i havent read the book ) i thought that the conventions for titles and names were weird! There was a mrs surname, miss surname and a couple of miss firstname in the same family!
Thanks for clarifying :)

Ms is forever linked in my mind to 'ms london', the freebie ads magazine my dad used to bring home for me in the 70's and 80's.

It means you are a modern young woman nd f u cn rd th u cn ln shthnd.

Nothing whatsoever to do with divorce.

The answer to your OP was about 15 years ago.
It was generally accepted that a ms was a divorced woman.
I thought that was what it meant as that was the general consensus of people I knew who ever commented on it.

Whoops, posted too soon.
it was also thought to be used by a divorcee who didn't want anybody to know that her marriage had failed.

It was especially true of business women who wanted to portray a professional status and there was still the stigma of having failed if your marriage had broken down. This is what I was lead to believe too.

I'm not saying I agree or the thinking was right but certainly of its time afaik.

I think Ms just means "my marital status is none of your business".

The answer to your OP was about 15 years ago. It was generally accepted that a ms was a divorced woman.

Not in the UK, I don't think. Loads of people I knew were Ms then.

I have used it for many years, boys are called master x and girls are called miss y, then when they get older males become Mr x and femalea stay Miss y - I am no longer a child and so I choose to be Ms

I got my CRB form bounced back as I had "lied on my form" by stating I was a Ms but not giving my previous surname (they assumed I was divorced and had not declared my married name).

This was in 2007.

Generally not accepted as that where I was 15 years ago.

Gosh merrymouse I remember when Ms London was Miss London!

No, I think maybe 15 years ago there might have been more people who were confused about what Ms meant, but it didn't mean that then anymore than it does now or ever did. I know my mum proudly used Ms on her library card in the mid 70s, and my drama teacher was Ms in the early 90s and we knew what it meant.

"The answer to your OP was about 15 years ago. It was generally accepted that a ms was a divorced woman."

No it wasn't. I've been Ms since I turned 18, which was nearer 30 years ago than 15 years ago having done that arithmetic I shall now do my best to forget it again , and that wasn't an uncommon thing to do even then.

I'm 50 and have used Ms since I was 15. Never been married, never divorced, and thought it was common knowledge that Ms means 'no marital status declared'.

Me too, been using Ms for 30 years and yet to be divorced, I too was aware of quite a few non divorced women using it back then.

The CRB thing puzzles me, mine got through OK 6 years ago and there is no way I would have put Miss or Mrs on it, but I have heard often on MN that they got bounced for using Ms wih no previous name. Maybe I just didn't put a title.

I think some people do confuse 'stuff I thought 15 years ago' or 'stuff everyone I knew seemed to think 15 years ago' with 'how things were for everyone 15 years ago'!

"I got my CRB form bounced back as I had "lied on my form" by stating I was a Ms but not giving my previous surname (they assumed I was divorced and had not declared my married name).

This was in 2007."

Really? That must have been an individual loon at the office then. I have been Ms since the 1970s and the only people who have ever commented on it have been sexist idiots. Like the ones who say it with inverted commas round it, or pretend it's difficult to pronounce, while happily having no trouble with Mrs...............

As per my earlier post, I had exactly the same thing with CRB around 2003. Caused much amusement in our office as the view that Ms was for a divorced women was laughably old fashioned even then.

I sent my driving licence back when they put me as miss instead of Ms. The guy on the phone was very grumpy and tried to say it was my mistake but I made them find my application form because I knew I wouldn't have put miss and I was bloody right. They re printed it for nothing.

Hakluyt, on reading the thread back, there are 3 separate posts about CRBs being reurned because of "Ms" so you've either got one long serving and active loon, or it was common policy over a number of years!

Or-dare I say it- a bit of an urban myth going on? Or the form being checked by someone before going off to the CRB people and being returned by them? I was a Civil Servant in the late 1970a and 1980s in a department where identities needed to be very carefully checked, and Ms certainly didn't mean divorced to us.