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France (nay, Europe) is still thick with folk who parade their ancestral titles; newspaper society pages and Paris Match magazine would miss them if they all suddenly vanished. There are even folk with competing titles (for example, there are two Iranian Shaw pretenders, one the son of the late Shaw who was deposed in 1979 and one the grandson of the Shaw who was deposed in 1920 by the father of the late Shaw).
When the Legion of Honour was created (by Napoleon) the various ranks and titles had meanings appropriate to the day - but that was 200 years ago. We are more accustomed now to terms that have lost their meaning, or are misleading. A poem circulated at AFHQ, Ottawa, during the Second World War spoke of the Jackson Building "where Wing Commanders have no wings and F/Os seldom fly" (if anybody has the full text, let me know !).
Simply put, in 21st century republics, when people buy titles as regularly as they inherit them, these terms "Chevalier" and "Barons" etc amount to zilch - zip - nothing. In some cases, less than nothing (descendants of the former Italian royal family are still forbidden to live in Italy). The constitution of the United States forbids titles and the U.S. is not unique in that regard.
Let me tell you about Prince Antoine d'Orleans and Braganza, a claimant to both the titles of King of France and Emperor of Brazil (two countries that abolished these positions). Prince Antoine and his brother were forbidden to live in France, so they were being educated in Austria. When the First World War broke out they paid formal respects to their distant cousin, Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, said goodbye, and were allowed to leave. They then offered their services to France, declaring they were willing to serve as private soldiers. The President of France said "NO WAY", so they applied to Britain, which granted them honorary commissions. I do not know what happened to his brother, but Prince Antoine ended up as a liaison officer attached to the Canadian Cavalry Brigade in France, where his equestrian portrait was painted by official war artist Alfred Munnings (thus the Canadian War Museum has a painting of a French prince with an Austrian education wearing a British uniform and sitting on a Canadian horse). Prince Antoine switched to the Royal Air Force and was killed in a training accident.
Which may not be relevant to the discussion but makes (in my opinion) a good story.
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