MAYOR (Lat. _major_, greater), in modern times the title of a municipal officer who discharges judicial and administrative functions. The French form of the word is _maire_. In Germany the corresponding title is _Bürgermeister_, in Italy _sindico_, and in Spain _alcalde_. "Mayor" had originally a much wider significance. Among the nations which arose on the ruins of the Roman empire of the West, and which made use of the Latin spoken by their "Roman" subjects as their official and legal language, _major_ and the Low Latin feminine _majorissa_ were found to be very convenient terms to describe important officials of both sexes who had the superintendence of others. Any female servant or slave in the household of a barbarian, whose business it was to overlook other female servants or slaves, would be quite naturally called a _majorissa_. So the male officer who governed the king's household would be the _major domus_. In the households of the Frankish kings of the Merovingian line, the _major domus_, who was also variously known as the _gubernator_, _rector_, _moderator_ or _praefectus palatii_, was so great an officer that he ended by evicting his master. He was the "mayor of the palace" (q.v.). The fact that his office became hereditary in the family of Pippin of Heristal made the fortune of the Carolingian line. But besides the _major domus_ (the major-domo), there were other officers who were _majores_, the _major cubiculi_, mayor of the bedchamber, and _major equorum_, mayor of the horse. In fact a word which could be applied so easily and with accuracy in so many circumstances was certain to be widely used by itself, or in its derivatives. The post-Augustine _majorinus_, "one of the larger kind," was the origin of the medieval Spanish _merinus_, who in Castillian is the _merino_, and sometimes the _merino mayor_, or chief merino. He was a judicial and administrative officer of the king's. The _gregum merinus_ was the superintendent of the flocks of the corporation of sheep-owners called the _mesta_. From him the sheep, and then the wool, have come to be known as _merinos_--a word identical in origin with the municipal title of mayor. The latter came directly from the heads of gilds, and other associations of freemen, who had their banner and formed a group on the populations of the towns, the _majores baneriae_ or _vexilli_. In England the major is the modern representative of the lord's bailiff or reeve (see BOROUGH). We find the chief magistrate of London bearing the title of portreeve for considerably more than a century after the Conquest. This official was elected by popular choice, a privilege secured from king John. By the beginning of the 11th century the title of portreeve[1] gave way to that of mayor as the designation of the chief officer of London,[2] and the adoption of the title by other boroughs followed at various intervals.