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In a bio you might be asked to list the pronouns you'd like to be addressed with. For example:

they/them/theirs

or

she/her/hers

But why does this list has three entries? Wouldn't it be enough to indicate "she" only, and the "her" and the "hers" follows grammatically from it? And wouldn't apply the same logic to "he" (with "him" and "his") and "they" (with "them" and "theirs")?

Or asked the other way around: Are combinations like "he/her/theirs" in a modern gender-diverse grammar possible?

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  • Anything is possible, but somebody stating the combination "he/her/theirs" should be less surprised when others make good-faith errors.
    – Henry
    Commented Jul 22 at 9:07
  • It seems quite common at least in the UK (and apparently Australia) just to give two pronouns e.g. "he/him", "she/her", although there's still potential redundancy there.
    – Stuart F
    Commented Jul 22 at 10:18
  • @StuartF "Redundancy" -- that's the perfect word here! Thanks. Might add it to the question.
    – halloleo
    Commented Jul 22 at 13:25
  • Two listed forms is the most common number in my experience, not three. See also this related question.
    – Laurel ♦
    Commented Aug 21 at 3:49
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    This question is a duplicate of Why do people use all 3 components in their gender pronouns?, but it should not be closed as such, as the answers posted to the older one are not as directly to the point as the ones here (see Mitch's first comment below the older question).
    – jsw29
    Commented Aug 21 at 16:33

2 Answers 2

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Nowadays, most people use only a few possible triples of pronouns:

he him his,
she her hers,
they them theirs,

but when the idea that you should choose your own pronouns started, there were many more possibilities suggested, for example:

e em eirs,
tey tem ters,
zie zim zirs.

And for sets of pronouns like these, just saying zie isn't sufficient, as most people would not know the objective and possessive pronouns that correspond toe zie.

I believe that there are still some people who would like to go by unconventional pronouns like zie/zim/zirs.

See, for example, this webpage.

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  • Great, very illuminating answer! Thank you!
    – halloleo
    Commented Aug 21 at 21:54
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You would ordinarily expect the objective and possessive pronouns to be the ones that are traditionally derived from the subjective pronoun, so listing all three seems redundant.

But one of the points of allowing people to choose their preferred pronouns is that they don't feel they fall into traditional norms. So for full flexibility and inclusivity, we allow people to choose each form individually, and there could be someone who prefers "she/them/his".

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  • Makes sense. But if we want to give flexibilty taht doesn't mean that we can't have some defaults. I suggest: "she" alone can be expanded to "she/her", can be expanded to "she/her/hers". No need to write it out - but I feel that the _expectation of a tripled is still looming amongst us...
    – halloleo
    Commented Jul 22 at 8:27
  • Also if you have something more unusual like "ze/hir/xe" it's good to spell it out in full.
    – Stuart F
    Commented Jul 22 at 10:19
  • @halloleo Perhaps, and maybe over time this will evolve into a more efficient format.
    – Barmar
    Commented Jul 22 at 13:25
  • @Barmar I hope so. :-)
    – halloleo
    Commented Jul 22 at 23:36
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    @BrianDonovan Good question. I'd like to think so, but I'm not in that community so I don't know for sure. It's also a very new thing so there's not much precedent.
    – Barmar
    Commented Jul 24 at 13:20

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