QOTW: Mr. Cow
July 12, 2008 | Filed under Q.O.T.W.
I recently bought a stuffed cow as a present for someone. It’s a bit of an inside joke slash term of endearment, so I won’t explain the reasoning behind the gift, but I will however, pose a question. Why do we assign genders to inanimate objects like stuffed animals? The French are particularly guilty of this (seriously, who decided which nouns are masculine and which are feminine?), but on a more basic level, many people refer to inanimate objects almost as though they’re human.
Some of us name our iPods, laptops, other electronic merchandise, and refer to them as s/he, rather than it. In reference to the aforementioned stuffed cow, though it is clearly female by sheer fact that it’s a cow and not a bull, myself and the gift’s recipient have taken to referring to the cow as a male, with it unofficially being dubbed Mr. Cow, or Mr. Moo. It’s an incredibly original name, I know.
Question of the Week: Can you provide me with an actual term for this habit of personifying inanimate objects? And if not, what’s the weirdest inanimate object that you’ve mentally assigned a gender/identity to?
22 Responses to QOTW: Mr. Cow
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I once assigned gender to a spoon. Mr Spoon.
In Norwegian, we have three word-genders: male, female and “no gender”. I’ve sometimes wondered who decided that, for example, the moon was male and sun was female.
Mari on July 13, 2008 #
Genderfication??
The weirdest thing I’ve named would probably be my pencils, their genders vary from pencil to pencil.
Shen-Shen on July 13, 2008 #
I assign gender to stuffed toys all the time based on their appearance-though some can look female yet I still call them male..who knows why I do it. Though I remember when I was little my dad told me that all cars were “shes” so that’s how it has always been for me and my car/s.
Bobbi-lee on July 13, 2008 #
Romanian also has genres as French, so I’m pretty much used to it. Still I never actually thought to call anything Mr/Mrs Something…
I tried giving my dolls names, but I soon forgot them. I think I only have 1 doll currently that has a name, and even that has been given by my grandma.
I tend to think of these objects more in terms of visual representations, rather than names.
Vera on July 13, 2008 #
In Norwegian, we have three word-genders: male, female and “no gender”. I’ve sometimes wondered who decided that, for example, the moon was male and sun was female.
That is very interesting seeing as in Spanish the Moon is actually female and the sun male.
I don’t actually ponder who decided it but why they decided a certain object had a certain gender or no gender at all.
Personification?… Kind of lol…
Noemi on July 13, 2008 #
I’m not sure, but after doing about two minutes of research, I found something somewhat related on Google Answers. Basically, it talks about how, unlike French and Spanish, English doesn’t assign genders to nouns anymore. But some nouns are referred to as exclusively “he” or “she” — for example, ships are feminine (I think?). Apparently, this is personification, but this wasn’t the personification I learned in second grade. :D
Anyway, it’s actually pretty interesting. *learned something today!*
My little sister and I have a habit of naming/gender-ing our guitars. They’re all guys, for some reason. Interestingly enough, we’ve never named our piano.
Kycoo on July 13, 2008 #
Everything to me is a “he” or a “Mr”. I can’t remember ever giving anything the title “she” or “Miss/Ms/Mrs”. My iPod is a he (Paulie), my laptop is a he (Mr. Lappy), etc. The closest I can get is my old computer, which I hated and named AngusMildredGretchen. :P
Genders in French are too confusing.
Clem on July 13, 2008 #
Innate Personification? Maybe it has something to do with when we were kids and tended to make up imaginary things and the habit has carried over to random personification of inanimate objects. Or maybe we are just evolutionarily wired to interact with humans/other animals so anything that has a vague similarity will be assigned a “he” or “she” over an “it.” I think I tend to do that much more with something like a stuffed animal than say, an ipod, because the former looks like a living thing in nature. Dunno, just speculation – I am such a bad scientist :P
and French! LA calculatrice. LE stylo. I never could wrap my mind over how a calculator was more feminine than a pen, haha.
Oh and I think when we got our first computer..like when I was 7 or something, we agreed it was a boy (weird I know). I usually stick with my stuffed animals.
marilyn on July 13, 2008 #
Oooh, we discussed this in our TOK class just before the summer started. There’s no “real” term for it, I think, but the closest that come to the practise is “animatism” and “anthropomorphism.” I stray away from naming things, it’s too strange a factor for me unless it kind of warrants it, stuffed animals for example. I’ve named a stuffed black pig I have Turnip because of his shape. But that’s about it. And this very concept is the thing that stops me from trying to learn French effectively. :/
Ramsha on July 13, 2008 #
ahaha, I named my mp3 player Mr. Cow (: I actually think it’s weird to assign gender or name things. To me they are just, objects, not matter how close I feel to them.
Anna on July 13, 2008 #
“Can you provide me with an actual term for this habit of personifying inanimate objects?”
Anthropomorphism. It’s a more general term for applying human characteristics to non-human things.
“seriously, who decided which nouns are masculine and which are feminine?”
Blame the Romans, not the French.
Leila on July 13, 2008 #
We all love anthropomorphism, don’t we? I name EVERYTHING, my favorite being my plant Andre.
Jennifer on July 13, 2008 #
Maybe there’s a word for it in Latin but I don’t know…
I was just on a roadtrip recently and we decided that our GPS navigator was named Laina. At first, it was hilarious… after awhile, we just got used to referring to her as “she.”
Felisa on July 13, 2008 #
Anthropomorphic.
1. ascribing human form or attributes to a being or thing not human, esp. to a deity.
Just because no one else gave you an official definition. *grins*
Nellie on July 13, 2008 #
My main stumbling block in French was that I could never remember the genders of the nouns. Of course, I came to realise that if I was ever actually in France, people would probably know what I was talking about even if I used the wrong word for “the” (unless I was talking about apples or potatoes!). That wasn’t much consolation in my speaking tests, though.
From what I read (in year 8, when I actually knew this stuff), linguistic gender is different to the ordinary kind, and genders aren’t necessarily masculine and feminine. For instance, I think a North American language of some kind had genders called “animate” and “inanimate”. But it was so long ago that I might not have remembered properly.
Just thank the Old English speakers for being lazy and evolving the language past the stage where it had genders…
Jessica on July 13, 2008 #
As my psychologist plainly puts it: naming your “stuff” reminds you of “times” in the “past” you wish to “remember”…imagine the four fingers quotation (plus I was only 10).
Truthfully, I don’t remember what I called my car.
monkee on July 13, 2008 #
I name random stuff . . . depending on whether I’m attached to it or not. Like I named my computer, all of it’s drive (except for the D — CD Drive), my external drives, my mp3 player, cellphone, and even my Nintendo DS!
However, when I do name my stuff I don’t assign a gender. To me, they are still “IT” so er yeah. ^^;; I just happen to like naming things. It’s fun to see what kind of whacky names I come up with.
Tara on July 13, 2008 #
I have a tendency to name pretty much everything. My laptop is called Rufus, my iPod is Helga, my TV is Gertrude etc. but I don’t assign them genders. The Finnish language is actually quite gender neutral. She/he is always “hän” no matter who you’re talking about and usually, in spoken language, it’s shortened to “se” which means “it”.
Kaisa on July 13, 2008 #
I named my car Mable! :D
Rachael on July 14, 2008 #
“In Norwegian, we have three word-genders: male, female and “no gender”.”
German has the same, and objects can fall under any of these categories.
I always think of objects with the gender they have in French. A spoon is feminine, so is a fork, a knife is masculine.
I don’t give objects to name, except, of course, Mario, my vibrator. He is named after the game character, naturally.
I have a friend who called his iPod Mr. Hankey (from the South Park…character).
Julie on July 15, 2008 #
I name everything. Prixy, my car, is a veritable character on my website. =) Practically, anyway.
Erin on July 15, 2008 #
Aside from naming/genderizing my stuffed animals, I also tend to give gender neutral names to electronics—my MacBook Pro is NoelliumBot and [first three letters of my last name]Shares to my family’s external hard drive. :D If it’s got a face (like stuffed animals), chances are, I’ll think of it as an actual living being, even if I don’t associate it with a gender.
Noellium on July 15, 2008 #