A mayor (from the Latin māior, meaning "greater") is a modern title used in many countries for the highest ranking officer in a municipal government.

In many systems, the mayor is an elected politician who serves as chief executive and/or ceremonial official of many types of municipalities. Worldwide, there is a wide variance in local laws and customs regarding the powers and responsibilities of a mayor, as well as the means by which a mayor is elected or otherwise mandated.

History

The word derives from Latin major ("major", "greater") which developed like such terms as senior ("elder") to mean (in) chief.

In spite of its Latin etymology, "mayor" was not a Roman office, as Roman municipia were rather governed by collegial magistrates bearing various titles, such as "Consul" or various terms expressing their number (e.g. duumvir, two), or even titles of pre-Roman local origin.

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, maior (and, in some contexts, the rarer Low-Latin feminine maiorissa) 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 was to oversee other female servants or slaves, would be quite naturally called a maiorissa.

The male or female officer who governed a king's household (and was often the de facto head of government) was the major domus, and tended to make his office hereditary. At the courts of the various realms (resulting from dynastic divisions and unions) of the Frankish kings of the Merovingian line, the major domus, generally known as the "mayor of the palace", also variously known as the gubernator ('helmsman'; the root of Governor), rector (also a gubernatorial title), moderator (idem) or praefectus palatii, was so powerful that one of their number would evict his master and successfully reunite the realms which his heir Charlemagne would turn into the Holy Roman Empire.

It came into use in the large entourages that followed the barbarian leaders who succeeded to the power of the Emperor of the West. The male officer who governed a king's or duke's peripatetic household was the major domus, the "major domo". In the households of the Merovingian Frankish kings, the major domus, or praefectus palatii ("prefect of the palace"), nominally a majordomo comparable to a British household's trusted butler, became the de facto head of government and even tended to become semi-hereditary, gaining such power (compare an oriental Vizier) that, in the person of Pippin of Herstal, he ended up evicting his master. He was the "mayor of the palace".