Allegedly both ms and mr come from the Latin root that magister comes from, so lexically it makes sense.
That’s accurate, but the path is a bit messy:
“mister” - from an unaccented form of “master”. In turn, “master” is from borrowed “magister”.
“mistress” - from Old French “maistresse” (modern “maîtresse”). Formed in Old French from the word “maistre”, that in turn was inherited from Latin “magister” (or rather magistrum, the accusative). For some reason the Latin feminine “magistra” was lost.
“miss” - clipped form of the above. The clipping likely happened in English.
That said using “magister” sounds like a bad idea. At the same time pedantic, and not solving the issue (it’s a gendered word referring to a human being, so not quite ideal for the non-binary folks there). I’m not sure on how I would solve this in English, I’d probably go for something like “esteemed” plus a relevant noun (“client”? full name? last name?); only slightly posh but that’s fine.
That’s accurate, but the path is a bit messy:
That said using “magister” sounds like a bad idea. At the same time pedantic, and not solving the issue (it’s a gendered word referring to a human being, so not quite ideal for the non-binary folks there). I’m not sure on how I would solve this in English, I’d probably go for something like “esteemed” plus a relevant noun (“client”? full name? last name?); only slightly posh but that’s fine.