Sagittarius ("archer"), as a noun, is exclusively masculine, but I am trying to refer to a female archer in Latin. Would simply changing the ending to sagittaria suffice?
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5At a glance, I'd say the answer is yes, but the question in the title seems to ask something different. – Rafael Aug 20 '17 at 21:37
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5In the case of sagittarius, -ii, that's just an adjective used substantively; i.e., sagitta, -ae 'arrow' -> sagittarius, -ia, -ium 'pertaining to arrows' -> sagittarius, -ii 'man who shoots arrows, archer'. Sagittaria, -iae would be the natural choice for 'woman who shoots arrows'. – Anonym Aug 21 '17 at 19:04
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1Related: Is the phrase professor emerita grammatically correct?, Can masculine 1st-decl. nouns be feminine? (e.g. “Nauta perita”?) – Asteroides Feb 26 '19 at 00:20
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In this particular case, yes. Sagittārius is the masculine form of an adjective meaning "pertaining to arrows"; the feminine form would be sagittāria.
In general…it depends. Many masculine Latin words are in the second declension, and these can be made feminine by changing the ending to -a. Many others can be treated as "common gender", used as masculine or feminine with no change (e.g. a poeta can be a poet of either sex).
As a rule of thumb, if it ends in -us, change it to -a, otherwise don't change anything. This isn't perfect and will sometimes fail, but 90% of the time it'll get you the right answer.
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