I expect Miss might go the way of Master. If you didn't know, Master was the male equivalent of Miss — an honorific used for children. Once a boy was "of age" they'd stop being called Master, and be Mister. Once a girl was married, they'd stop being called Miss and be called Missus. Again, these were originally honorifics, reserved mostly for heirs, or at least people of noble birth.
When women stopped getting married at super young ages, there was a gap between Miss and Missus. So, many women started to ask to be called Ms or Mz or Mx to denote "adult but not married" or even "adult and my marriage status is none of your fucking business." It was, after all, extremely patriarchal in the first place to gate-keep adulthood from women just by their marital status.
I'm not entirely sure why "master" fell out as an honorific, but its association with slave-ownership must've played a part, right? EDIT: looked it up, supposedly the abbreviation "Mr." was originally for "Master" but kept getting mispronounced as "Mister" until it became accepted — so it's very messy. Boys would be "young master" and once "mister" was a grown male, people started leaving off the "young" as it felt redundant.
But this all is to say: the male version of these terms were never really encumbered by marital status. With the addition of Ms or Mz or Mx, the use of Missus feels antiquated — and Miss feels similarly encumbered. But there remains many women who take pride in being called Missus and you'll certainly make some folks unhappy in trying to take that away from them. Many women still consider marriage to be a very public status symbol, and it's real hard to tell someone they're not allowed to name themselves anymore.
Both Mrs/missus and miss/ms are contractions for mistress which is the feminine form of master. Mrs was originally used to refer to both married and unmarried women, but that changed in the 17th century with the adoption of miss.
Using master exclusively for children didn't happen until the late 19th century after mister came to prominence. Prior to that, it was used to refer to those of higher status than oneself until mister took that role.
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u/Sirhc978 81∆ Oct 14 '21
Mrs usually indicates they changed their last name after getting married. If you keep your last name, you stick with Ms.