Is Warden considered a title in the same way that "Ser" is for knights?

Being a Warden means that you (should) strip all of your previous titles assuming you have any. With that in mind, "Warden __name__" is probably the right way to address a Gray Warden.

No. While still a title, "sir" is an honorific derived from "sire" which is also an honorific. "Ser" is just the same sort of thing.

"Warden" is a title relating to a profession, like "doctor".

Both are titles, but they are different kinds of titles

Alistair calls the grumpy mage: Ser Mage. So that's one instance. Also Mhairi calls Anders "ser mage" if he becomes a warden. 

Don't forget "Ser Ruth" the Warden in DAI you can judge.

In fiction, yes, and I agree it works and sounds better, but I'm wondering how it was/is done in real life.

Practically, the only reason I can see this being done is if there are several members of the family where using the name would only be confusing. Keeping with Game of Thrones, we would have Tywin Lannister and his brother Kevan, who would both be Lord Lannister. In their case, Tywin is the head of the family, so it would make sense to refer to him as Lannister, while all of the other males in the family are their given names.

Ned Stark is sometimes referred to as Lord Eddard, but outside of that, he's the head of the family, his brother is in the Night's Watch, and all of his children are young, so it makes sense to just use Stark for him.

Back to Dragon Age, that doesn't really work, at least with Ferelden titles, since there are more that just the singular "lord." Arl Eamon is arl, while is brother is a bann, so there wouldn't be any confusion in referring to Arl Guerin and Bann Guerin. The only thing I can think of is that, among the currently living people that were around for the rebellion, their father is known and respected forever as Arl Guerin, so the sons using their first name is in deference to that.

Of course... when you consider that specific example, it's more likely that it was done to avoid confusion for the player, which makes sense.


To close, I think the choosing of whether or not a particular title goes with a person's family or given name is down to several factors: audio aesthetics, clarity of information for the audience, and perhaps even writer preference.

It's incredibly complicated for a number of reasons. For example, consider the British Royal family had no surname before 1917, they had a first name and the House they belonged to. So they were addressed by first name - King Edward or King Henry or His Majesty Henry of such and such. In other European cultures there's a Nobiliary particle used in a surname to denote that person is royalty, and it was a great privilege to have. I would assume that it would be customary to address them using that particle (and therefore surname) as a recognition of that rank - Lord Von der lippe.

Long story short, it would depend on culture I believe.