What we mean by ‘title’

Like many property law terms, the word ‘title’ is used in a number of different senses. It is often used loosely to refer to someone's right or interest in a thing, but it also has a number of technical meanings. For example, it can be used to refer not to a person's proprietary interest in a thing, but to their entitlement to that interest as against another person. As Professor Goode explains in Commercial Law at pp. 52–4:

This is the sense in which the word ‘title’ will be used here. In this jurisdiction it is particularly important to be able to distinguish a person's entitlement to an interest from the interest itself because our system is primarily concerned with relativity of title rather than with absolute title. In other words, when a person claims to be entitled to a particular interest in a thing, it is usually sufficient for him to prove that his entitlement, or title, to the interest is better than that of the person disputing his claim: it is rarely necessary for him to prove absolute entitlement.

For reasons which will become apparent, it is possible for two or more people to have titles to the same interest in a thing.