# Origins of gendered nouns **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 5, 2018, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-gendered-nouns/813635 "2018-05-05T11:39:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2018, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-gendered-nouns/813635/41 "2018-05-08T01:19:02Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > Have a cite for that? > **[Korean Bell of Friendship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Bell_of_Friendship)** > > .mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct,.mw-parser-output .geo-inline-hidden{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}33°42′34.84″N 118°17′37.73″W / 33.7096778°N 118.2938139°W / 33.7096778; -118.2938139 > The Korean Bell of Friendship (more commonly called Korean Friendship Bell) is a massive bronze bell housed in a ston... > **[Bonshō](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonsh%C5%8D)** > > Bonshō (梵鐘, Buddhist bells), also known as tsurigane (釣り鐘, hanging bells) or ōgane (大鐘, great bells) are large bells found in Buddhist temples throughout Japan, used to summon the monks to prayer and to demarcate periods of time. Rather than containing a clapper, bonshō are struck from the outside, using either a handheld mallet or a beam suspended on ropes. > The bells are usually made from bronze, using a form of expendable mould casting. They are typically augmented and ornamented with a var... ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2018, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-gendered-nouns/813635/42 "2018-05-08T05:38:11Z")
> [@hibernicus](#): > > Checking the OED, it turns out that both usages are attested from the 14th century, being natural semantic extensions of the primary meaning “type, kind, class”. Not a euphemism as such. Would that be a common usage, and mind providing the cite? I realize I come to these from a Spanish POV, but the extension of gender to mean sex is something I’ve experienced firsthand in English, and the usage of both terms when referring to sex appears to vary a lot by location. > [@JKellyMap](#): > > Fascinating. Among other things – it’s probably no coincidence that, in several I-E languages (e.g., Latin and Greek),\* -a\* can be “feminine singular” or “neuter plural.” The neuter plural (e.g., _data,_ plural of _datum_) is an abstract noun\* from a verb (“to give”), conceived as a collection – so, the modern English tendency to consider “data” as singular is sort of going back to its roots. > > \*As were “feminine singulars,” at first – as thy still are in, say, Spanish (_gloria_=glory; _muerte_=death; _gente_=people…) Are _muerte_ and _gente_ supposed to end in -a now? ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2018, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-gendered-nouns/813635/43 "2018-05-08T17:55:24Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > [Korean Bell of Friendship - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Bell_of_Friendship) > [Bonshō - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonsh%C5%8D) Sorry, I meant do you have a cite for the assertion that grammatical gender has nothing to do with biological sex. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2018, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-gendered-nouns/813635/44 "2018-05-08T18:44:21Z")
It may be worth noting that ancient Roman grammarians had a very sophisticated understanding of grammar, comparable to modern understanding, and ancient Sanskrit grammarians even more so. In Sanskrit the words for gender used by the ancient grammarians are पुंलिङ्ग puṃliṅga, स्त्रीलिङ्ग strīliṅga, and नपुंसकलिङ्ग napuṃsakaliṅga, which clearly and explicitly mean male sex, female sex, and neither. Puṃliṅga and strīliṅga can also mean the male and female sexual organs, and napuṃsakaliṅga can also mean eunuch or hermaphrodite. In Latin, the word for ‘gender’ is ‘genus’, which primarily means ‘type or kind’, but there were extensive debates even in the ancient Roman world as to whether masculine or feminine gender were related to male and female sex. See this scholarly paper [Genus quid est? Roman Scholars on Grammatical Gender and Biological Sex](https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/1808/16256/Corbeill_TAPA_138(1)75.pdf) [PDF] From the summary: > [@](#): > > From at least as early as Varro, Roman scholars and grammarians occupy themselves with cataloguing peculiar instances of grammatical gender. The practice, with little extant precedent in Greek tradition, finds the grammarians consistently placing great importance upon the identification of grammatical gender with biological sex. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2018, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-gendered-nouns/813635/45 "2018-05-08T21:57:53Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > Sorry, I meant do you have a cite for the assertion that grammatical gender has nothing to do with biological sex. At this point, simply read this thread. While there is conflation of grammatical gender and biological sex in some languages, it is not a general characteristic. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2018, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-gendered-nouns/813635/46 "2018-05-08T22:16:33Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Are _muerte_ and _gente_ supposed to end in -a now? Good point — I tried to squeeze too much into that sentence. It seems a class of abstract-nouns-from-verbs developed as a special case of “inanimate,” and also neuter (inanimate) plurals (with a similar, but collective, sense). Only later were all these thought of as sharing the quality “femininity” — and that was because of an urge to neatly agree with a certain demonstrative pronoun. In other words, it was the PRONOUNS/ARTICLES (all meaning roughly “this,” “that,” or “the”) that first organized themselves into neat classes resembling modern “masculine,” “feminine,” (and “neuter”), and speakers felt compelled to complete the organization of nouns, to harmonize with them! (Traces of the DIFFERENT\* demonstrative pronouns for animate and inanimate are still in some IE languages, e.g. Greek with \*ho, he, \* and _ **to** _. \*not just like “el” and “la,” but truly different words). ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2018, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-gendered-nouns/813635/47 "2018-05-08T22:23:23Z")
Couldn’t you say that there’s traces of that in English, too, in “who” vs. “that”? ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2018, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-gendered-nouns/813635/48 "2018-05-09T04:33:35Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Couldn’t you say that there’s traces of that in English, too, in “who” vs. “that”? English grammar has been getting steadily simpler over the centuries. In Old English (Anglo-Saxon) all nouns had the three standard IE genders - masculine, feminine, and neuter. Nouns were inflected in five cases. Adjectives agreed with nouns in case, number and gender. Verbs had conjugations. First and second person personal pronouns had dual forms as well as singular and plural. Etc. Middle English (from the Norman conquest to about 1500) became steadily much simpler, and modern English has continued that process. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2018, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-gendered-nouns/813635/49 "2018-05-09T05:05:36Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > Middle English (from the Norman conquest to about 1500) became steadily much simpler, and modern English has continued that process. According to who? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2018, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-gendered-nouns/813635/50 "2018-05-09T05:48:31Z")
Makes me think of this bit illustrating the absurdity of German’s gender-based nouns: \*\*Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book. In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it looks in print – I translate this from a conversation in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books: Gretchen: Wilhelm, where is the turnip? Wilhelm: She has gone to the kitchen. Gretchen: Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden? Wilhelm: It has gone to the opera.\*\* – “The Awful German Language,” by Mark Twain ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2018, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-gendered-nouns/813635/51 "2018-05-09T06:15:14Z")
In Algonquian languages, the “genders” are animate and inanimate. Basically one gender for people and animals, and the other for everything else. In Dravidian languages, they have masculine, feminine, and neuter, but masculine and feminine are only for men and women. Everything else is neuter. Indo-European and Semitic are the only families that assign so-called masculine and feminine to objects. Most language families get by without any grammatical genders or other morphological noun classes at all. On the other hand, markings for semantic gender to denote male and female beings exist pretty much anywhere, but they do not trigger morphological agreements the way grammatical gender does. In English, the -ess ending of “waitress” is purely semantic, because no other words have to match it, except “she.” But then “she” can just as well be used for an accountant or scientist or women in any occupation regardless of marking on nouns. Apart from he, she, and it, English has no trace of its original grammatical gender, so the gendered pronouns are grammatically orphaned and can only serve semantic purposes. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2018, 10:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-gendered-nouns/813635/52 "2018-05-09T10:33:16Z")
> [@brujaja](#): > > Stop me if I’m wrong; but now that I think about it, in Spanish, the language I was first contemplating, the _articles_ attached to nouns are gendered, but the _pronouns_ are not, not even for people. Whereas in English, articles are neutral but we do use gendered pronouns for people. Interesting. As **colibri** noted, Spanish does have gendered pronouns (el/ella, nosotros/nosotras etc). Maybe what you were getting at was something that English people often find confusing with Spanish, French etc: that possessive pronouns and (some) possessive adjectives are gendered, but they agree with the gender of the object, rather than the gender of the owner. So whereas in English we would say “that house is his” for a man’s and “that house is hers” for a woman’s, in Spanish it would always be “esa casa es la suya”, or “ese coche es el suyo”, no matter whether it was a man’s or a woman’s. Likewise you’d say “vuestra cabeza”, but “vuestros ojos” to either a man or a woman. French is similar, so both “son” and “sa” mean both “his” or “hers”, depending on the gender of the noun, not the owner. ---
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2018, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-gendered-nouns/813635/53 "2018-05-10T02:46:28Z")
What seems to have happened with English is that the use of the suffixes for gender dropped completely (apart from him, his,her, hers … well they are probably not suffixes any more. ) Other gender based grammer for non-gender things was dropped due to the confusion over the different languages. Do we use the latin declensions or the french ??.. well hang it, don’t use any. What happened with high german was that the gender thing got removed from most declensions, but add/strengthened in the word “the”. One would think this was due to the impossibily large list of gender exceptions due to imports and mixing of accents , different words from different languages, and declension tables being imported and overlayed too. To avoid confusion, they made the gender explicit before each noun with grammar for “the”/“a”… Evidence… where its important to have gender in the declension is in the 2nd declension… So that a servant is a male servant or a female servant…and so its only the 2nd declension with gender in it. Suggesting that the confusion resulting from not having gender in the other declensions is balanced, perhaps by grammar experts deciding to do so, by explicit gender in the article words for the non-named 2nd (“accusitive declension”) nouns. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2018, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-gendered-nouns/813635/54 "2018-05-10T07:00:45Z")
Johanna writes: \> . . . Indo-European and Semitic are the only families that assign so-called masculine and feminine to objects. . . To nitpick, Semitic isn’t a family. It’s one branch of the Afroasiatic language family, and some non-Semitic languages within the Afroasiatic family assign so-called masculine and feminine to objects. And before someone nitpicks what I wrote, I’ve noticed that sometimes it’s spelled “Afroasiatic” and sometimes it’s spelled “Afro-Asiatic”: > **[List of languages by type of grammatical genders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_type_of_grammatical_genders)** > > This article lists languages depending on their use of grammatical gender. > Certain language families, such as the Austronesian, Turkic and Uralic language families, usually have no grammatical genders (see genderless language). Many indigenous American languages (across language families) have no grammatical gender. > Austronesian ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2018, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-gendered-nouns/813635/55 "2018-05-10T11:46:33Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Couldn’t you say that there’s traces of that in English, too, in “who” vs. “that”? Well, “who” is from the basic **interrogative/relative** pronoun \*kwo-. I was referring to two different **demonstrative** pronouns: 1. PIE \*so, \*seh (Greek _ho_ “he, that” and _he_ “she, that”), which gave us English **the**. 2. PIE _tod (Greek_ to\* “it, that”), which gave us English **that**. So, you’re right, there are traces in English, but in _the_ and _that_, not _who_ and _that_. (English \*he \*and _she_ are from yet another PIE pronoun, the deictic \*ki- (“this,” “here”). ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2018, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-gendered-nouns/813635/56 "2018-05-10T12:53:38Z")
> [@Colophon](#): > > As **colibri** noted, Spanish does have gendered pronouns (el/ella, nosotros/nosotras etc). Maybe what you were getting at was something that English people often find confusing with Spanish, French etc: that possessive pronouns and (some) possessive adjectives are gendered, but they agree with the gender of the object, rather than the gender of the owner. > > So whereas in English we would say “that house is his” for a man’s and “that house is hers” for a woman’s, in Spanish it would always be “esa casa es la suya”, or “ese coche es el suyo”, no matter whether it was a man’s or a woman’s. Likewise you’d say “vuestra cabeza”, but “vuestros ojos” to either a man or a woman. French is similar, so both “son” and “sa” mean both “his” or “hers”, depending on the gender of the noun, not the owner. Actually, for a native speaker not translating from English, 99% of the time it would be _ésa es su casa_ or _ése es su coche_. The only time your examples would be used as translated would be for something along the lines of “no, no, that one is not her house; that other one is” (_no, no, ésa no es su casa; esa otra casa es la suya_). And if you’re using _vuestros_ for a man, the 16th century wants you back. And please, I realize hunting down the tildes can be a pain, but in a case when we’re talking about Spanish grammar, it really should have been _él/ella_. _El_ is an article. Or just avoid that particular pair. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2018, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-gendered-nouns/813635/57 "2018-05-10T15:03:20Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > According to who? 😃 If I was you, I wouldn’t go there. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2018, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-gendered-nouns/813635/58 "2018-05-10T23:24:17Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **JKellyMap** : > > Well, “who” is from the basic interrogative/relative pronoun \*kwo-. I wasn’t referring to the interrogative pronoun. I meant the sense in which it’s almost interchangeable with “that”, like in “I’m looking for the man who shot my pa”. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-gendered-nouns/813635/59 "2018-05-11T04:06:10Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I wasn’t referring to the interrogative pronoun. I meant the sense in which it’s almost interchangeable with “that”, like in “I’m looking for the man who shot my pa”. That’s a relative pronoun. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2018, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-gendered-nouns/813635/60 "2018-05-12T00:16:38Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Would that be a common usage, and mind providing the cite? Actually, reading more carefully, the OED tends (somewhat ambiguously) to support your view that the modern use of “gender” for sex is recent. Under the heading “gender” we have: 3. Sex. Now only jocular. [This is where we see the early examples from the 14th to 19th centuries.] b. In modern (esp. feminist) use, a euphemism for the sex of a human being, often intended to emphasize the social and cultural, as opposed to the biological, distinctions between the sexes. [Here, the earliest example is from Alex Comfort’s _Sex in Society_ (1963), referring to both gender and sex: “The gender role learned by the age of two years is for most individuals almost irreversible, even if it runs counter to the physical sex of the subject.”] [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-gendered-nouns/813635.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origins-of-gendered-nouns/813635.md?page=4)