Professional titles are used to signify a person's professional role or to designate membership in a professional society. Professional titles in the anglophone world are usually used as a suffix following the person's name, such as John Smith, Esq., and are thus termed post-nominal letters. However, many European countries use prenominal letters such as Eur Ing. In the UK, many professional titles are 'chartered' such as Chartered Engineer or Chartered Physicist.

Under the European professional qualification directives, holders of professional titles in one member state are entitled to recognition of their title in all other member states. Once a person achieves professional certification in a given area of study, they have undergone examination by some form of governing body or professional association that is willing to assure the candidates competence in the given field of knowledge. In most cases, a certificate is issued for a set duration of time, at which the candidate must recertify with the same governing body.