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The actual origin of the title "Zealot", as several people have pointed out, is Halo 2's Uprising level. Before this, no one actually knew the rank of the Gold Elite in H:CE as it has never been described in-game or in its technical data file (The actor tags that do exist in H:CE are "elite" and "elite_special". The game system uses an AI system which determines how strong they are and labels them using colours.) In other words, it simply doesn't exist.
It is only after Halo 2 is released and its code analysed that people started labelling the Gold Elites in H:CE as Zealots. In the H2, the game has far more varied character tags; Minor_dog (dogmatic voice) and Minor_scl (Scully voice), Major_dog and Major_scl... etc. It also has a Zealot tag (Zealot_dog and Zealot_scl), showing that Bungie confirmed that Zealots are indeed the Gold-armoured Elites. Since then, it has been generalised by the fans that all Gold-armoured Elites in all games are Zealots.
There is no Zealots in H3 or H3: ODST however.... not that I know of.
A simple answer to this thread: Halo: Reach establishes that Zealot is not simply a rank but is actually an embodiment of ranks. It's a term that covers all ranks of a specific nature. The maroon-coloured Zealots (the Normal and Field Marshall), in my opinion, are Zealots of the SPECWAR division (hence, "Elite advance teams to hunt down artifacts of value to their religion"< as Halsey puts it) whereas the gold-coloured Zealots (General) are the battlefield/frontlines Zealots we've encountered in the past Halo titles, only with prettier armour.
Posted by: Spartan999
He has a valid point. Linking to a Halopedia article doesn't prove anything. There are only three sources in the Halopedia article for Zealots. One of them has already been covered here, and the other two don't actually have anything to do with the specific title of "Zealot."
Halopedia is one of the few Halo sites that always keeps track of the development of the Halo franchise... though it is not always accurate. So, I think it does prove something... :P
[Edited on 11.24.2010 6:55 PM PST]