Latin nobilis meant notable long before it meant blue blood
Nobility ranks just below royalty in aristocratic societies, often as an estate with legal privileges. The word comes from Latin nobilitas—famous or notable—first an informal Roman label for governing families before feudal fief-holders made it hereditary caste.
Monarchs or governments usually grant membership, though wealth and favour sometimes lift commoners. Ranks proliferate; many nobles hold no title, and some titles do not equal nobility. Republics such as the Dutch Republic, Genoa, Venice, and the Old Swiss Confederacy still fostered noble strata without kings.
Styles like prince, lord, or lady mark conversation even when untitled gentry dominate numerically. Feudal logic tied land or office to military service for a suzerain.
The privileges once meant something tangible. Before the French Revolution, European nobles typically collected cash rents, labour or a share of the harvest from people living on their manors, and in France a seigneurie could be bought, sold or mortgaged, becoming entailed if the crown raised it to a barony or county. French kings ennobled rich bourgeois in the parlements, creating a noblesse de robe that the older sword nobility, the noblesse d'épée, came to resent. In the early Renaissance, duelling was an accepted way for a gentleman to settle quarrels and prove his standing. In Britain a peerage requires royal letters patent. Nobility is distinct from mere wealth: riches do not confer it, and losing them does not remove it. Nobles in heraldic countries almost always bore arms to display ancestry, though arms alone never proved rank. Since the First World War hereditary privilege has largely been abolished in the West, leaving a mostly honorary dignity, with residual legal traces in places such as Spain and the UK.
Source: Nobility
