esquire [LME] An esquire was originally a young man of gentle birth, who attended a knight. Esquire comes from an Old French word which means ‘shield bearer’ and comes from Latin scutum ‘shield’. Squire [ME] is really the same word. Esquire later came to refer to a man belonging to the higher order of English gentry, below a knight, and from there became a polite title added to the name of a man, at first only one regarded as a ‘gentleman’.