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I noticed people using pronouns next to their names Jo (she/her). I understand the reason behind the first part (she), but I completely don't get the second part. Doesn't "she" imply "her"? Is it even possible to use something else, "She changed his mind" (same person) - it wouldn't make sense (from the grammar perspective), would it?

So my question is: why the second part is there?

I understand this may be a delicate matter, I don't mean to offend, just trying to understand a grammatical (and possibly cultural) phenomenon.

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    It's just someone being clear about both the subject and object forms. Not particularly necessary for "she", but if someone adopted "shis" and "shims" it would be quite helpful.
    – Hot Licks
    Commented Jan 14, 2021 at 13:41
  • 2
    But what of possessive and reflexive forms? Would they not be equally ill-known for these invented personal pronouns? (I am shakily assuming that shis and shims are subject and object forms respectively.)
    – Brian Donovan
    Commented Jan 14, 2021 at 13:45
  • << Jo (she) >> is perhaps considered less intuitively interpretable as << Joe (a female) >> than << Jo (she/her) >>. Novel usages are almost always difficult. They tend to confuse or be unattractive / wordy.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Jan 14, 2021 at 14:53

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Purely grammatically speaking, there are actually five inflectional forms that would need to be supplied: nominative (I), accusative (me), dependent genitive (my), independent genitive (mine), and reflexive (myself). I have also observed that people normally supply two (e.g. they/them). Note that this is indeed incomplete: what, for example, is the reflexive form? Is it themselves or themself? However, people sometimes do supply more than two. For example, according to this CNN report,

recently, Sen. Kamala Harris introduced herself at a CNN LGBTQ Town Hall by stating that her pronouns are “she, her and hers.”

I would speculate that the most common form of indicating the pronoun preference in writing,

(they/them)
(she/her)
etc.

i.e. two inflectional forms separated by a slash and in parentheses, has become a way to signal—a code of sorts—that these are indeed the person's preferred pronouns without the person having to write out the full sentence My preferred pronouns are… After all, giving just one may be a bit confusing as to what it is supposed to mean. (EDIT: this is point 2. in the answer to the question linked above.)

Discussion

Further down in the CNN report, it says,

The most common third-person singular pronouns are “she/her/hers” and “he/him/his.” “They/them” can also be used to refer to a single person, while some people use gender-neutral or gender-inclusive pronouns like “ze/hir” (pronounced zee/here) instead. Some people might not use pronouns at all and go only by a name.

Here is the 'traditional' list of first-person pronouns. The categories are NOMINATIVE, ACCUSATIVE, DEPENDENT GENITIVE, INDEPENDENT GENITIVE, and REFLEXIVE (CGEL, p. 327):

                          DEP     IND
NOM    ACC    GEN    GEN     REF
    I          me      my      mine    myself
    he       him    his        his       himself
    she     her     her       hers     herself

Here are five sample sentences, illustrating the use of these five inflectional forms:

NOM:           I go to work.
ACC              Words can't hurt me.
DEP GEN:  That's my umbrella.
IND GEN:  That umbrella is mine
REF:            I may hurt myself.

Here are some gender-neutral third-person singular pronouns that have been proposed (source):

they them their theirs themself
(f)ae (f)aer (f)aer (f)aers (f)aerself
per per pers pers pserself
xe xem xyr xyrs xenself
ze/zie hir hir hirs hirself
zie zim zir zis zieself
sie sie hir hirs hirself
ey em eir eirs eirself
ve ver vis vis/vers verself
tey ter tem ters terself
e/ey em eir eirs emself/eirself

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