Six was originally chosen to give a power of two (when you add "None of the above" and "None of your business"). Once you go beyond six you're starting to get into a long list, and you start making value judgements about whose title "really matters". But it also turned out to make a lot of sense in terms of how widely titles are used. There's definitely a big drop between the first four and "Dr" and "Mx", but there's then another order of magnitude between those two and everything else, afaict.
"Rev" is well established, yes, but hardly more so than "Sir", or "Professor". And on the numbers (http://tigerfort.dreamwidth.org/33813.html?thread=16405#cmt16405) it trails far, far behind the listed six; it seems likely that there are quite a number of titles that apply to around the same size population. (I wouldn't be surprised if "Sister" technically does rather better than "Reverend", although most of the nurses who are entitled to use it don't, these days.)
But again, the list is a bare minimum. If someone (BA, for example - see comments on previous entry) wants to list every professional title they can think of, that's fine, although I think they'd be better off allowing free text at that point. If someone wants a list of a dozen entries, they need to decide what their priorities are, and what their list will say to the people who see it.
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dancing_serpent
(no subject)
Date: 2015-07-09 11:50 am (UTC)"Rev" is well established, yes, but hardly more so than "Sir", or "Professor". And on the numbers (http://tigerfort.dreamwidth.org/33813.html?thread=16405#cmt16405) it trails far, far behind the listed six; it seems likely that there are quite a number of titles that apply to around the same size population. (I wouldn't be surprised if "Sister" technically does rather better than "Reverend", although most of the nurses who are entitled to use it don't, these days.)
But again, the list is a bare minimum. If someone (BA, for example - see comments on previous entry) wants to list every professional title they can think of, that's fine, although I think they'd be better off allowing free text at that point. If someone wants a list of a dozen entries, they need to decide what their priorities are, and what their list will say to the people who see it.