Androgynous Names
By antipathy, January 3, 2006 in Asexual Musings and Rantings
Sirach
Mega Mitosis
Sirach
AVEN Members
291 posts
Location:Surrey, British Columbia
Posted January 3, 2006
LOL I doubt that one could change the forms 'thou, thy, thee' from second-person singular to a third-person singular gender-neutral pronoun! Good try though!
Or... thee.
Thee is so cool!
Possessive: theer/theers
Theer book is here. It's theers.
Okies... that would be hard to adopt, sounding too close to the archaic 'thou, thy, thee' pronoun and 'they, their, them.'
I don't think any artificial replacements will work. English has been quite stubborn for language reforms, from spelling to its plain openness to foreign words. It will just have to do. Whenever I want to refer to someone, I usually say 'that/this person' instead of a pronoun. It seems to be the only natural way to describe someone without having to hint at gender.
For androgynous names, we have a large Sikh community, and since equality is part of their religious values, it has also been extended to names with only a 'surname' of 'singh' (lion) for males, or 'kaur' (princess) for women. Punjabi names tend to be quite gender-neutral, but it can be difficult sometimes since they don't seem too variated. We already have a few Sukhi/Sukhdeep/Sukh-(insert suffix here) at my school, and thus is becomes hard to differentiate.
Sometimes, I make fun and call myself Kevinder to blend in! :lol:
Too bad English can't be like other languages. All Austronesian languages (Tagalog, Indonesian, Malaysian, Hawai'ian, Tahitian, Maori, etc) tend to have gender-neutral pronouns and words. If one wishes to be specific, one would merely add in an adjectival describer, as in 'male' or 'female.'
Tagalog
asawa = husband / wife
bayani = hero / heroine
bata = child (no 'girl' or 'boy' specifically)
anák = child (as in 'son' or 'daughter')
siyá = he / she
We might as well speak Lojban or Toki Pona and get it over with. :roll:
https://www.asexuality.org/en/topic/13391-androgynous-names/
