Something that has vexed me for some time now.
What do they call male nurses in other English-speaking countries?
In case you don’t already know, the English word "nurse’ is actually female. Always has been. (Though you have to admit the American English (mis-)usage is more creative.)
:):)::):):)
In Canada we call them nurses.
Krankenbrüder?
RN or LPN, or ARNP, MSN, CRNM, etc. if they have an advanced degree.
Wiktionary treats neither ‘nurse’ nor its Middle English antecedent as necessarily female. Middle English borrowed the word ‘norrice/norice’ from Old French:
[QUOTE=Wiktionary, Middle English]
Noun
norice (plural norices or norice)
[ol]
[li] A woman employed to take care of one’s children or babies; a nanny.[/li] [ul][li]One employed to breastfeed a child; a wet-nurse.[/li] [li](rare, Christianity) Mary as the caretaker and guardian of Jesus.[/ul][/li] [li]An idea, behaviour or a proponent or proponents of an idea or behaviour that supports something.[/li][li] A man employed to take care of one’s children and educate them.[/li][li] An animal or plant which rears or raises its offspring.[/li][li] (rare) Nourishment, rearing, raising.[/li][li] (rare) One who provides religious sustenance; a proponent of doctrines.[/li][li] (rare) One who is one’s guardianship.[/ol][/li][/QUOTE]
The word itself has no gender, like all nouns in English. Traditionally it was customarily assumed that nursing was “women’s work”, hence a hierarchy (in the UK at least) using terminology like “sister” (in charge of nurses on a ward) and “matron” (in charge of all nurses in a hospital). All that in the UK is now, officially at least, replaced by gender-neutral terms. So a nurse is a nurse, whatever may or may not be under their uniform.
Hebrew uses the words *Ach *and *Achot *- literally, “Brother” and “Sister” - for male and female nurses. “Sister” has always been a word for female nurse, probably taken from the Catholic church, nurses being traditionally nuns. “Brother” is obviously a neologism.
German’s been trying to de-gender some of the language, which is rather difficult. I have never heard anything other than Krankenschwester, but Wikipedia suggests there is an alternative:
This must have come up dozens of times here in the past, but what about widow/widower and actress? The Cambridge Dictionary definitions start with “a man/woman who…”
In Spain there have always been enfermeras and enfermeros. Yes, always since we started speaking Spanish: the Brother Nurse in all-male schools and monasteries has traditionally been, you know, a Brother.
Nurses’ offices in my local healthcare center used to be labelled ENFERMERA. At one point, my mother’s doctor was assigned a nurse called Juan Carlos, 6’2" and bearing a full beard. I happened to be there with her on his first day at work. Protocol calls for the nurses to check periodically that the people for the next few appointments are there and take any relevant paperwork. When he came out and asked for the paperwork, one of the older patients exclaimed “oh no, this is wrong! The sign needs to be changed!” There was general agreement: the sing was wrong and must be changed. Signs say ENFERMERÍA now (nursing).
In Japanese, by a 1948 law, all nurses were called 看護婦 kangofu, where the last kanji 婦 means a woman. In 1968, a new law defined male nurses as 看護師 kangoshi, with the last character having the meaning of “expert.” Female nurses were still called kangofu.
The law was revised in 2002 for both genders to called kangoshi. My mother is a retired nurse and I learned Japanese while female nurses were still referred to as kangofu.
Just to confuse the issue, we have male midwives here in the UK, although less than ½% of the total. Like ‘nurse’ the title ‘midwife’ is now gender-neutral (in theory at least).
The same thing they call them in your country: “nurse”.
jerez, English has plenty of words for gendered things or concepts. But with the exception of a handful of pronouns, the words themselves don’t have gender.
Since English generally lacks grammatical gender, many English speakers confuse grammatical gender with biological gender. These are two separate things, although they may overlap.
“Widow/widower” and “stallion/mare” may refer to specifically male or female humans or animals. But the articles and adjectives used with them are invariant, unlike in languages with grammatical gender.
The OP reminds me of that old “joke:”
Q. What do you call a female soldier?
A. A soldier.
Gah, the fight against sexism gets so tiring.
I’d never thought about what nurses are called in non-English speaking places; but my initial thought upon reading the thread title was, ‘I wonder what they’re called in Germany? They can’t possibly be called Krankenschwestern.’
So I tried Google Translate. When I type ‘nurses’ it does indeed return Kranenschwestern – specifying that that’s the word for female nurses. It says the word for male nurses is Krankenpfleger.
Pfleger isn’t a word I learned in high school or college German, so I tried translating that. Typing ‘Pfleger’ into the box returned ‘Pfleger’ in the translation. No help. Let’s take off the ‘er’. That came back as ‘care’. So ‘sick-carer’ seems to be German for a male nurse.
.
Just noticed this (Wikipedia entry):
Another manifestation of grammatical gender that continues to function in English is the use of certain nouns to refer specifically to persons or animals of a particular sex: widow/widower, actor/actress, etc.
In French, “personne” is feminine, but that does not mean a man is not a personne. In Latin, “poeta” is masculine, but a woman may be a poet. Therefore I mean, even if “nurse” were grammatically feminine, what difference would it make? In English nobody assumes a bitch is not a dog or an actress is not an actor, though on the other hand I haven’t heard Elizabeth Regina referred to as King.
Agreed, but we’re discussion what the words are, not what the words should be.