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Thread: Gender Neutral Titles
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2020-12-16, 12:49 PM (ISO 8601)
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Gender Neutral Titles
Doing some worldbuilding for a large scale game I run (Lots of participants, not just a single party)
I've been trying to make it more inclusive, although this is an area I am not particularly skilled in. I'm doing my best to educate myself but I came to this later in life and I have a lot of catching up to do.
I've been going back through all the game materials and tried to add gender neutral titles for the various ranks and statuses present in the setting. Most aren't too difficult, but some don't have real world equivalents and so figuring out a good one has me stuck.
One of the militaries in setting, for example, uses Armsman/Armswoman (Derived from Man-At-Arms) as their Private equivalent. I'm having trouble figuring out an appropriate Gender neutral option. Armsperson is one idea, but it doesn't sound right to me.
If anyone has a thought on a good term to use I'd appreciate it. Or if you could point me at a resource for gender neutral job titles/ forms of address in fantasy writing, I'd appreciate it. I haven't had much luck doing my own searching.Warning, this poster makes frequent use of jokes, snarks, and puns. He is mostly harmless and intends no offense.
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2020-12-16, 01:29 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender Neutral Titles
Fodder?
It is gender neutral and is a fairly accurate title since it is what they do in fantasy: die in droves to prove that evil person X is evil or if they are on the wrong side they die to the heroes because heroes have to get fights.
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2020-12-16, 01:30 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender Neutral Titles
Would Footsoldier work?
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2020-12-16, 01:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender Neutral Titles
Call them after their weapons the way you call musicians after their instruments?
Like "I need a line of pikes here and bows behind"Last edited by noob; 2020-12-16 at 01:32 PM.
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2020-12-16, 01:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender Neutral Titles
Well, you seem to have some issues with fantasy stories
To be honest, I usually think of -man titles as gender-neutral. As in, the abbreviation of hu-man. So I guess it would be armsman for a human, armsdwarf for a dwarf, armself for an elf, etc.
But according to Google, [warning, silliness] you could also call them armsidividuals, armsmortals, armsouls, armsfellows (i have a particular fondness for fellow as a gender-neutral term), armsfigure, armspersonage, armscharacter, armstype, armsbloke, armsort, armsbeggar, armscustomer, armschap, armsfella, armscookie, armsgeezer, armsdude, armsdog, armswight, or [vulgar slang] armsbugger.elephants are made of carbon
and so are you
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2020-12-16, 01:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender Neutral Titles
I like armsouls the most from that list.
Until you have soulless individuals in your army at that point you have to improvise to not make them feel discriminated.
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2020-12-16, 01:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender Neutral Titles
Armsbearer, perhaps?
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2020-12-16, 01:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender Neutral Titles
I second referring to them by role/equipment more than anything else.
"Archer" is gender-neutral, so are "hoplite", "rider", "infantry", etc.
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2020-12-16, 02:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender Neutral Titles
Why not just “armstaker” as in, “take up arms”?
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2020-12-16, 02:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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2020-12-16, 02:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender Neutral Titles
Thirded, although "riders," are usually broken up by what they ride: cavalry, camelry, elephantry, ect. as they have different battlefield use.
The difficulty, of course, lies in the groups without common alternative terms. I think "pike squares," should work for those groups with reach weapons (as opposed to the hoplites), and "pavisier" (after their shields) for crossbowmen. I have no idea for dedicated swordsmen; swords usually weren't primary weapons. "Chargers," perhaps, given swords were used as a primary weapon when one intended to rush at the enemy and either bypass or withstand pikes or volleys?
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2020-12-16, 03:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender Neutral Titles
Minor issue is armsbearer is already a thing. The guys used to carry and maintain a knight or lords weapons and other equipment.
Mind you, this is a made up fantasy world so if you want that word to mean something different more power to you.
Some fantasy I’ve read that have worked fairly well was just making up their own names for things. I’ve seen elite warriors referred to as Carls or Husrieks used for any gender. Or they draw from different languages and older forms that still probably were gendered in the original culture but don’t necessarily follow the gender suffix conventions in English so they get away with it. I don’t think anyone bats an eye that the Thegn or Legionnaire is female even though thegn literally meant servant boy and being a man was a requirement of the Roman legion.
Kinda think charger more directly implies shock cavalry.Last edited by Dienekes; 2020-12-16 at 03:50 PM.
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2020-12-16, 04:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender Neutral Titles
Well, what's a good substitute is going to depend on how tightly your play group uses the definition of man at arms and how well they'll accept a substitute that isn't precise-to-definition. If they're historically very precise then you pursue different options than if they're loose.
These will likely work whether you're using man-at-arms in the old sense of heavy armored cavalry armed with something long and pointy, or just the general sense of "armored fighter":
- the laziest jump is to gendarme...which is the French "person of arms" doing the exact same military role.
- armiger is worth consideration, but it's a bit linguistically tangled because in Latin it's just "arms-bearer" in Italian "armigeri" is the equivalent man-at-arms role, but in English the term also is used in heraldry (bearer of heraldic arms as opposed to literal arms and armor).
From there, the options are choices about what defines the role. Cataphract captures the idea of combatant that is on horseback and heavily armored, while lancer emphasizes the pointy stick and it's accompanying tactics but could be applied to lighter-armored cavalry. There are evocative culture-specific terms like hussar and of-an-era terms like dragoon and cuirassier that gesture at "person, armed and armored on horseback" but don't work if people are very precise about their terminology.Last edited by Yanagi; 2020-12-16 at 04:44 PM.
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2020-12-16, 05:23 PM (ISO 8601)
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2020-12-16, 07:55 PM (ISO 8601)
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2020-12-16, 08:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender Neutral Titles
True, though it still kinda works. Since man in Old English was the generic form of person were wermann was male and wifmann female deriving from proto-germanic languages whose origins are still being debated upon as far as I understand it.
While Human comes from the Latin homo.
So while the reasoning is etymologically nonsense, it kinda does stumble upon a valid use of "mann."
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2020-12-17, 12:27 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender Neutral Titles
just remove the "man" and the "woman".
The shall be: Arms.Avy by Thormag
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2020-12-17, 12:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender Neutral Titles
Some other options: refer to them by rank, either social or military: Private/Soldier, Yeoman/Archer, Sarge, etc.
Another option is to have most npcs respond to each other in the standard derogatory stuff of militaries throughout history. "Come on you apes, want to live forever". Dog soldiers, grunts, jarheads, etc.
Last, you can always give units prideful nicknames to each unit. The immortals are famous, but the Sarwen of Axum are a really cool example, as they become a extended part of the ruling body, and you were bound to your unit even after retirement. So this unit might be the 44th pike, the shining dragons, and every private Soldier is called Dragon.
"Captain, take Sergeant Brasco, Dragon Williams and whatever reptiles you can gather up from the shiny snakes to take that hill."
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2020-12-18, 09:49 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender Neutral Titles
Armiger is the obvious general neutral version of Armsman/Armswoman.
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2020-12-19, 07:16 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender Neutral Titles
"Folk" might be a useful alternative to gendered suffixes.
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2020-12-19, 07:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender Neutral Titles
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2020-12-20, 02:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender Neutral Titles
In groups, I tend to refer to pikes, light horse, muskets, heavy cav, archers, that sort of thing. For mixed units, I'd either use the commander's name or the unit designation: "General Cordoba will advance on the city gates, with Second Tercio covering the left flank and Guzman's cavalry on the right."
If you're thinking of individuals: soldier, serjeant, squire, knight, militia, levy, dragoon, hussar, lancer, cataphract.Junior, half orc paladin of the Order of St Dale the Intimidator: "Ah cain't abide no murderin' scoundrel."
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2020-12-25, 08:07 AM (ISO 8601)
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2020-12-25, 03:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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2020-12-25, 05:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender Neutral Titles
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2020-12-25, 08:12 PM (ISO 8601)
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2020-12-26, 12:47 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender Neutral Titles
I suppose that works.
Just to run through the history:
- The Greek myrmidons were known for unfailingly following orders, much like ants fighting against a far larger colony to the bitter end.
- Stemming for this description, calling a soldier a "myrmidon" in the middle ages was basically the same as calling someone an "automaton," or "NPC" today.
- The Japanese idea of a swordsman lionizes the same principle, (see: the samurai and the modern stereotype of bushido) so when they were translating the "Swordsman" class from the Fire Emblem games to English they used the "myrmidon" name.
So filling the name gap swordsmen have with "myrmidon" is specifically what has no basis in history or mythology.
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2020-12-27, 06:19 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender Neutral Titles
This was an issue with the original Dungeons & Dragons. Player characters could be fighting men, magic-users, and clerics; and could be men, dwarves, elves, or halflings. Dwarves, elves, and halflings could be fighting men. Dwarves and halfings were required to be fighting men. Also, clerics as well as magic-users could use magic.
I wish that I could honestly say that that D&D's terminology has much improved. As it is, it's still pretty poor at categorization, with word choice being just one part of that.
Isn't it weird that "warlock" is now a class name? "Witch" is the one English example I can think of where the less connotatively gendered term is the feminine one. (Compare and contrast "god", "actor", etc.)
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2020-12-31, 12:49 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Gender Neutral Titles
In English the only gendered pronouns are feminine. The so-called masculine pronouns are assumed to be neuter unless the subject is known.
That said, soldier and trooper are gender neutral. Blade, cohort, dragoon, and a host of other titles will work as well.
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2020-12-31, 01:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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