She-ships, He-ships

[semper_augustus]

Everyone agrees that a ship is not neuter, but feminine in grammatical gender. A ship is a she. But then, most sailors were male. Certainly the sailors who made that rule grammatical were.

I wonder. If sailing had been a mostly female profession, would a ship be a he?

Comments

[thewronghands]

It seems likely. [grin]

Anthropomorphic Gender Roles

[nomdiplume]

It's an interesting question. This sort of thing often makes me curious. Why are the sea and the moon women while the sun is male? Why does ground usually take the feminine pronoun