Well, you've said it before, but that doesn't make it in any other sense well-established: KoS makes it pretty clear, if I'm recalling it at all correctly, that _both of_ thane and carl are both social statuses, and occupations at least in a broad sense. Probably a moderately large range of occupations, in reality, and an associate 'social cachet'. This is the sort of social structure that starts to break down one you begin to get 'impoverished gentlefolk', and 'cottars' owning an Ozzie-like number of sheep, but that's a different matter. Another excellent source is the Humakt the Champion myth, in which H. essentially haggles/beats his way up the social pile, and explicitly turns down 'carl' in favour of holding out for 'thane'.
The precise historical A-S meanings may be of course be quite different, that would be by-the-by for our purposes.
Cheers,
Alex.
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