Sahib

Sahib or Saheb (/ˈsɑːhɪb/) is a term of address originating from Arabic (صاحب). As a loanword, Sahib has passed into several languages, including Persian, Kurdish, Turkish, Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Uzbek, Turkmen, Tajik, Crimean Tatar, Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, Pashto, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Rohingya and Somali. During medieval times, it was used either as an official title or an honorific. Now, in South and Central Asia, it is almost exclusively used to give respect to someone higher or lower. The honorific has largely been replaced with sir. In the Tibeto-Burman language of Mizo, it is shortened as sâp, referring to people of European descent.

Sahibzada is a princely style or title equivalent to, or referring to a young prince. This derivation using the Persian suffix -zada(h), literally 'born from' (or further male/female descendant; compare Shahzada) a Sahib, was also (part of) the formal style for some princes of the blood of Hindu and Muslim dynasties in the Indian sub-continent, e.g.:

This could be further combined, e.g.:

Sahib was commonly used in the Indian Sub-continent as a courteous term in the way that "Mister" (also derived from the word "master") and "Mrs." (derived from the word "mistress") is used in the English language. It is still used today in the sub-continent just as "Mister" and "Mrs." and continues to be used today by English-language speakers as a polite form of address. It was used on P&O vessels which had Indian or Pakistani crew to refer to officers, and in particular senior officers. On P&O Cruises and Princess Cruises vessels, the term continued to be used by non-Indian and non-Pakistani junior officers to refer to the senior deck and engine officers for many years, even when no Indian or Pakistani crew featured in the ship's company. It is also appended to the names of holy places associated with the Sikh gurus such as Nankana Sahib, Patna Sahib, Anandpur Sahib.

In the British Indian Army, a British officer would address a viceroy's commissioned officer (i.e., a native Indian officer) as "<rank> sahib" or "<name> sahib". In turn Indian soldiers would address British or Indian superiors with this term as a substitute for "sir". This form of address is still retained in the present-day army of independent India.

The term was applied indiscriminately to any person whether Indian or non-Indian. This included Europeans who arrived in the sub-continent as traders in the 16th century and hence the first mention of the word in European records is in 1673.

The authentic feminine form of Sahib is Sahiba. Under the British Raj, however, the word used for female members of the establishment was adapted to memsahib, a variation of the English word "ma'am" having been added to the word sahib.

Pukka sahib was also a term used to signify genuine and legitimate authority, with pukka meaning "absolutely genuine".