Yes, it’s common in most English speaking countries, but Samwise is literally an employee of the Shire Baggins.
The Gamgees are of a lower social class than the Baggins. Samwise’ father, The Old Gaffer, also worked at Bag End. Frodo has generational wealth, not just from Bilbos adventure with the Dragon, but his Mother was well-to-do also. Bilbo and Frodo had servants, groundskeepers, and housekeepers. That doesn’t even include the party staff they hired on.
He also calls himself “your Sam”, and Frodo is called his master even when the narrator is speaking:
he had stuck to his master all the way; that was what he had chiefly come for, and he would still stick to him. His master would not go to Mordor alone.
It’s still used (even in the US) by older people for boys not yet of age. My grandma, who died in 2009 and would have been 103 this April, would send me birthday cards addressed to “Master [root_beer]” when I was a kid.
Samwise literally calls Frodo “Master”
In England, that word was used as a polite honorific, a forerunner to “mister” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_(form_of_address)
Yes, it’s common in most English speaking countries, but Samwise is literally an employee of the Shire Baggins.
The Gamgees are of a lower social class than the Baggins. Samwise’ father, The Old Gaffer, also worked at Bag End. Frodo has generational wealth, not just from Bilbos adventure with the Dragon, but his Mother was well-to-do also. Bilbo and Frodo had servants, groundskeepers, and housekeepers. That doesn’t even include the party staff they hired on.
He also calls himself “your Sam”, and Frodo is called his master even when the narrator is speaking:
It’s still used (even in the US) by older people for boys not yet of age. My grandma, who died in 2009 and would have been 103 this April, would send me birthday cards addressed to “Master [root_beer]” when I was a kid.