In Italy, the title is really the story

ROME - Yell for a doctor in an Italian moviehouse and you risk a stampede. Almost everybody here, it seems, is a dottore.

Or professore or maestro or some other honorific.

But don't fret if you don't grow up to be an avvocato (lawyer), geometra (surveyor), ragioniere (bookkeeper) or ingegnere (engineer). Sooner or later someone will call you dottore, even if it's only a parking attendant hoping for a tip as he guides you into a space.

The universe of Italian titles has just expanded with a court ruling that even those who pursue the new "short" university degree - achieved in only three years, instead of the usual four to five - may legally call themselves dottore.

The impending explosion of dottori in the population has made front pages.

"The title - the declared dream of millions of mothers, the secret torment of all those who abandoned college - will be bestowed with greater generosity," Beppe Severgnini wrote tongue-in-cheek in Milan's Corriere della Sera daily.

Severgnini, who has observed his country from afar as a journalist in the United States and Britain, thinks titles evolved as kind of a security blanket for Italians during centuries of foreign domination.

"Emperor, viceroy - all the juicy titles were taken so you had to think of something else," he said in a telephone interview.

In the United States, "money and the ability to buy something is very important. Believe it or not, Italians are not so big on this. If you have a so-so salary and a good title, people think you might be happy," said Severgnini.

Titles can be a touchy business.

Call to speak to a doctor, and you might get dressed down. "He's professore, not dottore,' " a receptionist will snap.

The title of professor applies to all teachers from middle school up. An elementary school teacher is maestro or maestra.

That's not to be confused with the maestro generously applied to just about anyone in the music business, from conductor to fifth violinist.

Written forms of address are more elaborate. In correspondence ranging from social invitations to reminders to pay your garbage tax, titles are preceded by adjectives such as Egregio (eminent, remarkable, excellent) and superlatives - for example Illustrissimo Dott. Rossi" (Most Distinguished Doctor Rossi).

Magnifico (magnificent) sounds great, but applies only to a university rector.

And in a country where soccer is the great equalizer, coaches also have a title of course, possibly related to the game's English roots: il mister.

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