How come the terms for military officers are french words?

Question

For example, Lieutenant/Seargent/Colonel/Corporal - they're all French words, just curious why

Answer 1

For hundreds of years after 1066 the English were ruled by the French and Norman French was the prefered language of the ruling class.
So in the legal system and the military it became normal to use french words.
These names for officers are a leftover from those days.

Answer 2

maybe becasue onthe onset of french revolution there was the very first truly conscript army formed.
previously, the commanders were not officers, but more or less the nobles, with titles like duke, etc. all around the Europe.

I dont think that this has much to do with the french roots of the modern English, maybe with exception of the battalion, which truly is being used from late middle ages.

btw Cavalry is from spanish :) caballeros - riders.
to the caballo horse is related through french chevallier -knight the Chivalry

generally said through the middle ages every noble man brought his men in arms, plus some surplus farmers into the battel. these men followed his coat of arms during the battle, or the assigned flag, when the knight went into the attack with the heavy cavalry.

Answer 3

Actually, when it comes to military words, the names for officer ranks aren't the only ones with a French origin

Corporal, Sergeant, Lieutenant, Colonel, Platoon, Company, Regiment, Battalion, Artillery, Infantry, Battery... I could go on for ages.

The English language is made up of quite a lot of "borrowed" words from other languages, most notably French and Latin. I can only assume.

Answer 4

The US military uses something simular to British rank structure.

A lot of English and French words are the same because of the Norman and Roman influences in their history. People moved across the channel because Normans and Romans, so did some aspects of the language.

Its not just French and English, a lot of those words go back to Latin and are used in a varient in Italy and Spain as well.

Answer 5

It comes from the time of the Roman Empire, and meant an officer in charge of a column of soldiers

Answer 6

Admiral is derived from Arabic. So, they are not all derived from the French language.

Answer 7

I would imagine that all modern armies were modeled after Napoleon Bonaparte's.

Answer 8

much easier than chinese characters! am I right or what?