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Sometimes it is preferable to leave a person's gender undisclosed and some people do not fall into the usual two gender categories. This requires some adaptations in languages that indicate gender in nouns or pronouns. In English one can use the plural "they" in the singular so as to avoid choosing between "he" and "she". In Swedish a new neutral pronoun "hen" has been introduced in addition to the masculine "han" and the feminine "hon".

I would like to know if there is a neutral choice in Latin. Using neuter (e.g. id instead of is or ea) is one option, but it makes the person in question sound inanimate. In case of a person of unknown gender Latin uses masculine, but this is not really a good option for this purpose: If I speak about a specific person, then using a masculine pronoun indicates that the person is male, whereas I wanted to make no statement about their gender.

Which Latin pronoun(s) could I use to refer to people of unspecified gender? If you suggest a new pronoun, where has it been used and how can I decline it? (I am not asking you to come up with new pronouns. I am asking if there are attested pronoun suggestions for this purpose in the Latin literature.) If you suggest using neuter pronouns for people in this case, can you provide use examples to show that this has really been done before?

Let me stress that I am looking for pronouns in the case of a specific person. As I wrote in a comment below Cerberus' answer about the neutrality of masculine pronouns: It is important that the person is specified. If someone says "If someone comes to my office, I will sing him a song", I understand that it doesn't have to be a man. But if I hear "My spouse has his own business", I assume the spouse is male.

Joonas Ilmavirta
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    And what do you do with adjectives and participles? They also tell the reader or listener the gender of the person you are talking about. – Sir Cornflakes Apr 20 '16 at 10:09
  • @jknappen, I wanted to make this question more focused and chose to discuss only pronouns. Adjectives, participles and nouns are also an issue. To some extent one can prefer words in the third declension to remain neutral, but avoiding pronouns is harder. If I know a suitable pronoun, I can work myself around revealing the gender in many situations. That's why I started with pronouns. – Joonas Ilmavirta Apr 20 '16 at 10:40
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    Is it really on-topic to ask for made up words? I think that will lead to all sorts of problems. It's one thing to ask for a tweaking of Classical and Medieval models, but it's something entirely different to suggest new pronouns. My 2¢. – cmw Apr 21 '16 at 02:17
  • @C.M.Weimer, I should have phrased that more carefully. My idea was to ask for previously made up, attested new words, in case there are any. I imagined someone might have come up with a pronoun in the last two millennia. And my main question really is which pronoun to use in this case, be it neuter, a new word, or something else. I edited my question a bit. – Joonas Ilmavirta Apr 21 '16 at 07:39

6 Answers6

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It is important to distinguish between syntactic gender and semantic gender. As we all know, a word like centuria, "group of ca. 100 soldiers", is syntactically feminine, but semantically it is masculine, since the Romans had no female soldiers. A feminine word is used to describe men. Or consider the feminine word virtus "manhood", from vir "man". There is no necessary conexion between syntactic and semantic gender. Cf. German das Mädchen "the girl" (neuter), Dutch het meisje "the girl" (neuter).

As you say, in Latin the masculine gender is used if you want to indicate that you are talking about a person of unknown gender. It is the same in many Indo-European languages (all that I know, at least), and that's probably why no neutral pronouns for people are used: the reader or listener knows that you are not actually indicating that this unknown person should be masculine, you're just applying the neutral use of the pronoun. So you could say that e.g. is really is the neutral pronoun for people in Latin, in addition to its being the masculine pronoun. A word can have two different senses, after all.

So in case you want to talk about someone without revealing his gender, you can just use masculine pronouns and adjectives, and nobody will know!

Cerberus
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    Thanks! If someone speaks to me about a specific person and uses a masculine pronoun, I deduce that a male is in question (whether or not it's meant so). It is true that masculine pronouns can also be semantically neutral, but in this case there is a serious risk of misinterpretation in using a masculine pronoun. If I want to hide the gender of someone that I want to talk about in English, I refer to them with the pronoun "they" and its forms, never "he". (In Finnish there is no gender whatsoever.) But it might well be that there is no better option in Latin, no matter how much I wanted one. – Joonas Ilmavirta Apr 20 '16 at 13:26
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    @JoonasIlmavirta: I don't know: is there a real risk of misinterpretation? I use he/hij/er/is/il for people of unknown or unmentioned gender in English/Dutch/German/Latin/French, and it is completely natural to me? I suppose your experience may be different if you're coming from a genderless language! P.S. I've added the feminine word virtus as a nice example. – Cerberus Apr 20 '16 at 13:51
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    I would say there is, but I acknowledge that it is a matter of opinion. At least I would misinterpret you if you used a masculine pronoun in a neutral sense of a specific person. It is important that the person is specified. If someone says "If someone comes to my office, I will sing him a song", I understand that it doesn't have to be a man. But if I hear "My spouse has his own business", I assume the spouse is male. – Joonas Ilmavirta Apr 20 '16 at 13:58
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    @JoonasIlmavirta: Fair enough: in that case, the masculine sense of the pronoun takes over. I suppose trying to hide gender is not something the language was made for! This wouldn't be possible in Dutch either. And in Latin it's even harder, because there are so many more words you'd have to avoid, as we discussed earlier (adjectives i.a.). A fun game, though. – Cerberus Apr 20 '16 at 14:09
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    The million dollar question: can anyone find an example of a Latin singular they – brianpck Apr 20 '16 at 14:46
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    @brianpck: Hah, yuck! (As you may know, there is the general plural 3rd person as used in verbs, like ferunt Caesarem occisum esse "they say Caesar has been killed", which is aequivalent to dicitur and is used when you don't know or don't want to specify who said it. And there are of course pluralia tantum. And there is the constructio ad sententiam, à la populus sunt. But otherwise I don't think it's possible to syntactically refer to something singular by a plural word—which wouldn't make sense anyway, so no loss there, I'd say.) – Cerberus Apr 20 '16 at 15:02
  • Re: "das Mädchen". I just thought about this yesterday and many people give this as the first example of semantic gender not matching syntactic gender in German. But Mädchen is neuter not "randomly"; it's neuter because all diminutives are neuter. I don't think this should count as a surprising mismatch of semantic vs. syntactic gender. – Earthliŋ Apr 26 '16 at 21:46
  • @Earthliŋ But virtus has a specific feminine suffix too, and so do femina and civitas. And Mannschaft. That applies to the gender of most words, I believe, once you know where to look. It does not, however, mean that there should always be a meaningful and necessary correspondence between semantic gender and morpho-syntactic gender. – Cerberus Apr 26 '16 at 22:50
  • Oh, no, I only objected to using Mädchen as an example =) – Earthliŋ Apr 26 '16 at 22:52
  • @Earthliŋ Oh, phew! – Cerberus Apr 26 '16 at 22:54
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    @brianpck A Latin singular they would not sidestep the gender issue, since Latin plurals still have three distinct genders. – Anonym Jul 26 '18 at 19:17
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    @Joonas llmavirta: In English ignorance of sex means "he" is used e.g. "He (the burglar) must have left some clues." If a policeman (they no longer turn out for burglaries) asks how you know it's a man, the reply is--figure-of-speech. The only people referred to as "it" are babies: "What is its name?". Some mothers object and snap "HE or SHE is called...!!". – tony Apr 13 '21 at 15:40
  • @tony That practice with "he" is common but not universal in English. – Joonas Ilmavirta Apr 13 '21 at 16:06
  • @Joonas llmavirta: The alternative is to preface every sentence with "he or she"; which someone may do once, before they get fed-up with it. – tony Apr 14 '21 at 11:52
  • @tony Notice that the question is about speaking of a specific person whose gender is not to be revealed. In that case "he or she" doesn't really work, but "they" does. Speaking of a general person is a different matter, but in the case of a specific person "he" can't really be parsed as gender neutral. – Joonas Ilmavirta Apr 14 '21 at 13:10
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    To the best of my knowledge, the Latin grammatical gender system’s Indo-European origin is gender-not-specified (m), gender-specified-as-feminine (f) and gender-specified-as-non-gendered (n). This then was the root of the Latin gender system. That did not take away from the fact that some would make fun of poētae being feminine, but then again, would anyone dare do the same when meeting a thick-armed heavy-built nauta? I dare say not. My point, in any case, is that grammatical gender is strictly speaking not a thing for masculine nouns. Pronouns, on the other hand, are more complicated. – Canned Man Aug 26 '22 at 22:58
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I am a language teacher, but an avid Latin fan for many years.

I could give you a lot of talk one way or another, but I will just give a suggestion.

The closest thing to an epicene pronoun of any sort is the animate interrogative quis?, as it has only an animate/inanimate distinction.

However, I would offer «isquis» based on 'quisquis' the relative/interrogative pronoun, but with some kitbashing.

SINGULAR

NOM_____GEN_____DAT_____ACC_____ABL_____VOC
isquis__iscujus_____iscui_____emquem___iscui____isquis

PLURAL

NOM_____GEN_______DAT_______ACC________ABL________VOC
esques___umquum_____isquibus_____esques___isquibus____esques

Note: *icui (Orig. DAT.SG cuicui) will do duty for both DAT.SG and ABL.SG . **esques (Orig. ACC.PL *quesques) will do duty for both NOM.PL & ACC.PL .

Again, just by way of suggestion. And 3rd decl. ADJs and PRS.PTCPs would match pretty easily in the M/F non distinction.

Have no idea what to do with 3-termination ADJs like bonus/a/um, or PFT.PASS.PTCPs, GRDVs…(?¿)

Maybe fall back on the default masculine gender in those cases? Maybe use synonyms from 3rd decl. ADJs instead (¿?)

Just some thoughts

CHRISTOPHER TORAK
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Start by referring to the individual with a noun (like persona) that has a grammatical gender that does not depend on their natural gender. (I wouldn't use homo because that takes natural gender at least in some eras of Latin.) Then all pronouns you subsequently use show concordance with the grammatical gender of the noun, not the natural gender of the person, so they are gender-neutral in the sense I think you care about (i.e., unrelated to natural gender).

C Monsour
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Here is a resource on inclusive gender for use of Latin today. LupercalLegit hosts it and the National Committee for Latin and Greek repost it in their DEI Resources with permission. https://www.lupercallegit.org/post/a-style-guide-for-gender-inclusivity-in-the-latin-language. The NCLG pages begin here: https://sites.google.com/view/nclgdeiresources/home-nclg-dei-resources. The main site is www.promotelatin.org

NCLGMagistra
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    Good call! Unfortunately this might attract downvotes, since link-only answers tend not to preserve very well (links break easily and often), so I posted another answer with a summary of Lupercal's proposal. Feel free to edit that information into this answer if you prefer, and I can remove the other one. – Draconis Aug 29 '21 at 16:59
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    Is there any specific reason the fifth declension is used? It seems too feminine to be used for a gender-inclusive paradigm, seeing as there is only one masculine fifth declension noun, and it is sometimes feminine. – NanoEta Aug 31 '21 at 00:18
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Going along with their proposal for nonbinary noun and adjective declension, Lupercal's style guide proposes a new set of pronoun declensions for referring to nonbinary people or people of unspecified gender.

The general idea is the same as for nouns and adjectives: using fifth-declension endings as a neutral option. These are used only when the form of the pronoun would otherwise be explicitly gendered (ejus looks the same in the masculine and feminine, for example, so there's no need to change it) and are attached directly to the stem of the pronoun.

For a few examples, hēs is used in place of hic or haec, ēs for is or ea, quēsdam for quīdam or quaedam. (These forms go along with the other proposal for nouns and adjectives, so you would likewise have hēs magistrēs bonēs in place of hic magister bonus or haec magistra bona.)

This proposal is relatively new (being published within the last year), so I haven't seen it used much in the wild, but it has the backing of groups like Trans in Classics and the National Committee for Latin and Greek.

Draconis
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  • I've never heard of the NCLG...does it actually have any clout? I also have never heard of Lupercal, and (from what I can tell) it seems to be just one of many Latin reading groups. I'm just skeptical of how much of an "authority" we ought to be giving to a proposal that (to my ear) sounds utterly bizarre and un-Latin. – brianpck Aug 30 '21 at 02:11
  • @brianpck I'm not sure, honestly; I'm not part of Lupercal or affiliated with them, but I've now seen the style guide discussed in multiple separate Latin composition-related groups, so I figured that was evidence enough to deserve an answer here. (I'm not really sure what the "authorities" are on neo-Latin in general, apart from the Vatican, but being discussed by people composing in Latin seems like a reasonable enough metric.) – Draconis Aug 30 '21 at 02:31
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Given the general statūs (plural) of women in the ancient world, I think you're going to have to invent something epicene, as in Swedish hen. (Many folks in English have started using ze as a nominative, hir as a genitive, and mer as an objective or, alternatively, hu, hus, and hum. In fact, historically English had two epicene pronouns, ou and a, but nobody seems interested in reviving them. Thon was very popular for a while, starting in the nineteenth century, but seems to have died out.)

As far as I know, nobody has come up with syntactically epicene pronouns for Latin (the current pronouns, as @Cerberus says, are already semantically epicene). If you want new words I propose therefore es to go along with is, ea, id, hec with hic, hæc, hoc, and illed with ille, illa, illud. I have however no strong attachment to these.

Perhaps declensions would be (in the order nom, gen, dat, acc, abl):

es, es, e, em, e

hec, hes, he, hem, he

illed, illes, illu, illem, illu

I find these kind of hideous, though, and, to be honest, if you start using them, I'm far more likely to be confused than to understand what you're saying. Perhaps it would be easier then simply to decide always to use ea, hæc, and illa, and make it clear in other ways that you intend these pronouns epicenically. (Malum eæ dabo, quæ veniat. Si Marcus venit, exempli gratia, malum dabo.)

Joel Derfner
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    Not sure if i'm alone here...but your suggestions are pretty painful to look at, much less use :) – brianpck Apr 20 '16 at 14:53
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    Well, I myself find them pretty painful to look at, much less use, but I also find ze/zir/mer and hu/hus/hum pretty painful and impossible to use. Answer updated to indicate same. – Joel Derfner Apr 20 '16 at 14:54
  • Try parsing: "es melior est he" – brianpck Apr 20 '16 at 14:56
  • Well, if one is determined to use them as words, then es melior est he would make perfect sense. – Joel Derfner Apr 20 '16 at 14:56
  • However, I really have no attachment to them. They were just what first came to mind. There may very well be better alternatives—in which case please propose them! – Joel Derfner Apr 20 '16 at 14:57
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    You may as well retain the existing gen. and dat. forms which are already epicene (eius, ei, huius, huic, etc.): so something like es, eius, ei, em...? – TKR Apr 20 '16 at 17:05
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    Thanks for the answer! Perhaps contrary to what you intended, you managed to convince me against coining an epicene pronoun. The point @TKR makes is an excellent one: in some cases the pronouns are already epicene. If you want to come up with new pronouns, incorporating these forms is a good idea. – Joonas Ilmavirta Apr 20 '16 at 19:48
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    I'm glad you came to that decision; if it seemed that I wanted you to coin a new pronoun, then it's evidence that my effort to bend over backwards in the interest of impartiality was successful. I have mixed feelings about epicene pronouns in English as it is. – Joel Derfner Apr 21 '16 at 07:05
  • It's worth noting that ou and a are just reduced forms of one (another English epicene pronoun) and thon is just a contraction of that one. – Anonym Jul 26 '18 at 19:19
  • As a native English-speaker, I've never heard ze/hir/mer used to refer to a person of unknown gender. Some people use various neopronouns for themselves, but by far the most common construction for a person of unknown/unspecified gender is singular "they" (followed by the more old-fashioned options like generic "he", "he/she", "he or she", etc). – Draconis Aug 29 '21 at 17:29