The gender of ships

SS Manxman in her (?) prime

At one time it was generally accepted that ships used feminine pronouns e.g. The Titanic sank on her maiden voyage. This convention seems to be going out of fashion, possibly because of feminism or perhaps because ships are less important a part of people’s lives and are certainly less romantic than they used to be. However, this gender confusion from the BBC seems a bit odd (my emphasis):

The SS Manxman was launched from Cammel [sic] Laird* in Birkenhead in 1955. It was used to ferry travellers from Liverpool to Douglas until 1982. She is now at the Pallion Shipyard in Sunderland [awaiting breaking up]. Enthusiasts are invited to buy some of the memorabilia on board, or part of the vessel itself.

*The Merseyside shipbuilding company’s name is Cammell Laird.

The question of gender seems particularly acute with this particular ship. Should the vessel have been renamed SS Manxperson? Presumably other ships with male names have been referred to with feminine pronouns.

Comments

[Barrie England]

Is it confusion, or is it that the word ‘ship’ is perceived to be feminine whereas the word ‘vessel’ is not?

[Peter Harvey]

A good point. The OED has two mentions of vessel itself that refer to ships and none for vessel herself It does have one for ship herself.

However, that doesn't explain The SS Manxmanacting as the antecedent for both it and she in consecutive sentences.

[Brian Barder]

Calling ships (or vessels if referring to ships) "it" always grates on me: I expect "she" and "her", which probably says something about my great age. But what about countries? Britain and England are surely always feminine, as is France (Britannia, Marianne; motherland; la patrie). Isn't Germany masculine, or neuter (fatherland)? Not sure about the US or Spain, though. Diplomatic practice tends to play safe and refer to all countries as it.

Sorry, I'm guilty of Mission Creep here.

Brian
http://www.barder.com/ephems/

[Peter Harvey]

Do you mean in English or in the country's own language? In English all cou tries would be feminine. I don't know if Germany ever regarded countries as feminine using sie (she) - it would be a Romantic idea to do so - but the word Land (country) is grammatically neuter.

In Spanish most countries are grammatically feminine because they end in -a. Oddly, Estados Unidos often takes a singular verb although Spanish is usually very strict about subject-verb concordance.

[Barrie]

Yes, I missed that first inconsistency, Peter.

If, in English, ships, countries, and sometimes motor cars, can be treated as if they were feminine, that is merely a convention, and one that is not invariably observed. It does not make them grammatically feminine. No English noun can be. Even a word like ‘woman’ is not feminine, even if that which it describes usually is.

Languages like French which do have have grammatical gender seem to observe it scrupulously. An injured man is ‘une vicitme’. And although, the French department of Normandy is feminine, ‘Le Normandie est un paquebot transatlantique’.

[Peter Harvey]

In English pronouns are the only words that have gender.

Spanish also has feminine víctima and persona. I sometimes tease people by asking why, if we have female forms for words we don't also have víctimo and persono for males. They are always surprised by the idea.

A friend once asked me why a taxi-driver referred to his hotel as el Santa María. The reason is that hotel is masculine. Plata is the Spanish for silver and is feminine, as you would expect. There is a bar in Barcelona called El Plata. It is named after the river in Buenos Aires, and río is masculine.