Spivak pronoun

The Spivak pronouns are a set of gender-neutral pronouns in English promulgated on LambdaMOO based on pronouns used by Michael Spivak. Though not in widespread use, they have been employed in writing for gender-neutral language by those who dislike the standard terms "he/she" or singular they.

Three variants of the Spivak pronouns are in use, highlighted in the declension table below.

The original ey has been argued to be preferable to e, because the latter would be pronounced the same as he in those contexts where he, him, his loses its h sound.

The precise history of the Spivak pronouns is unclear, since they appear to have been independently created multiple times, each time likely without knowledge of the previous.

The first recorded use of the pronouns was in a January 1890 editorial by one James Rogers, who derives e, es, and em from he and them in response to the proposed "thon".

In 1975, Christine M. Elverson of Skokie, Illinois, won a contest by the Chicago Association of Business Communicators to find replacements for "she and he", "him and her", and "his and hers". Her "transgender pronouns" ey, em, and eir were formed by dropping the "th" from they, them, and their. (See .) The article that first reported the pronouns treated them as something of a joke, concluding with the line, "A contestant from California entered the word 'uh' because 'if it isn't a he or a she, it's uh, something else.' So much of eir humor."

Writing in 1977, poet, playwright, and linguist Lillian Carlton submitted a letter to the journal American Speech reporting (and arguing against) the invention by "an American professor" (likely Dr. Donald MacKay) of pronouns based on "the long sound of the vowel e [[i]]." Although her primary argument against the proposed word is her assertion that English "already [has] a perfectly good... word that refers to either sex," namely "one," she also raises the observations that "spoken fast, it comes uncomfortably close to the illiterate hisself... [Furthermore], ee sounds too much like he and would therefore be confusing." Similar arguments, along with the desire to distance themselves from the male-centric singular "he" and derivatives, are still a primary factor in the proliferation of constructed pronouns.

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