London ? Long gone are the days when a knight was a champion rider in gleaming body armor charging to save a damsel in distress — and the title should go, too, a British parliamentary committee said Tuesday.

The committee said the age of chivalry was dead and Queen Elizabeth II should stop making sirs and dames of everyone from rock stars to civil servants.

“Increasingly, titles appear to be an embarrassment rather than a cause for celebration,” said a report by the Public Administration Select Committee, which includes lawmakers from Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labor Party.

Britain’s archaic system of acknowledging service to society by bestowing on people fusty and somewhat humorous titles such as “The Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle” and “Most Honorable Order of the Bath,” has in recent years divided the country.

The secrecy surrounding who gets an honor and why has frustrated many Britons, along with the outdated references to the country’s once-prevalent class system and the British Empire.

Poet Benjamin Zephaniah publicly rejected an OBE — Officer of the Order of the British Empire — this year because the title reminded him of “thousands of years of brutality.”

The twice-a-year honors lists always include a few celebrities — what former Prime Minister Harold Wilson called “a handful of stardust.”

Not everyone goes along — singer David Bowie, comedian John Cleese and actors Albert Finney and Kenneth Branagh all rejected honors. Others, such as Mick Jagger, Elton John and Paul McCartney, were happy to become knights. Actresses Maggie Smith and Joan Plowright both added dame to their names.

A few of the 3,000 or so honors a year are personally awarded by the queen, but most are dished out by the government. The lists also may include a liberal sprinkling of special friends of the prime minister.

This photo shows the medals of a male and female Commander of the Order of the British Empire, at left, a male and female Member of the Order of the British Empire, center, and a male and female Officer of the Order of the British Empire. A parliamentary committee recommended Tuesday that Britain modernize its honors system by doing away with knights and dames and dropping references to the British Empire.

The committee, which had a series of hearings on the honors system, called for more transparency in the system and said titles including sir and dame should be scrapped. It recommended reducing the number of honors from 16 to four, and the abolition of awards which are now largely reserved for diplomats and civil servants.

The proposed new honors would be called Companion of Honor, and three grades — Companion, Officer and Member — of the Order of British Excellence.

The committee said women and people from ethnic minorities appeared to get fewer honors than white men; it called for future lists to more closely reflect British diversity.

Blair’s office said it would study the findings carefully.

However, some Britons were outraged by the proposal.

Michael Fabricant, a lawmaker in the opposition Conservative Party, said the titles were a fascinating part of Britain’s history.

“Our second biggest dollar earner is tourism. And I can tell the Administration Committee that they don’t come here for the weather,” he said.