Mystery of the DPhil - Solved!

I have long wondered (and have had people ask me) why my university in England awarded me a DPhil instead of a PhD. I know that both abbreviations are short for the Latin for Doctor of Philosophy, but I never knew exactly why the difference exists.

While searching Wikipedia today for related information, I was delighted to stumble across the answer at last. It confirmed what I've long suspected - it's to do with the vagaries of Latin grammar:

Due to the flexibility of Latin word order, there are two schools in the abbreviation of doctor's degrees. At Cambridge, D follows the faculty (e.g. PhD, LittD), while at Oxford the abbreviation D precedes the faculty (e.g. DPhil, DLitt).

So PhD is short for Philosophiæ Doctor, while DPhil is short for Doctor Philosophiæ - and both translate as "teacher (doctor) of philosophy".

Most universities, in the UK and around the English-speaking world, follow the Cambridge model and use PhD. But the University of Sussex (where I went) and a handful of other institutions sprinkled across the Commonwealth follow the Oxford model, and use DPhil.

I love eccentric explanations like this. And I'm quite pleased to be a slightly weird, anachronistic DPhil, instead of one of those common-as-muck PhDs. ;-)