You know that gender pronouns like hie and zie are a thing when they start showing up in TV dramas. If you haven’t noticed them, never fear, for I, your professor of pronouns, will now enlighten you.
Let’s start with hen. It’s Swedish, not English, but be patient, because there’s an English tie-in at the end.
In 1966, the Swedish linguist Rolf Dunas coined the gender-neutral pronoun hen to replace the generic masculine han, or ‘he.’
By the time Dunas thought up hen there were perhaps 150 English pronouns that had already been offered as alternatives to generic he. Dunas may have heard of some of them, but if so, he never mentioned it. Instead, he modeled hen on the Finnish third-person singular hän (pronounced roughly like English hen) because Finnish pronouns do not express gender and because ungendered hen fit neatly into the existing Swedish pronoun set of masculine han and feminine hon.
Dunas wasn’t happy with generic masculine han, the equivalent of English generic ‘he,’ because women shouldn’t be subservient to men. And he disliked the “nonsexist” Swedish alternative, han eller hon, ‘he or she,’ for the same reasons that English speakers dislike the phrase: both han eller hon and he or she are awkward, wordy, and as we’ve become increasingly aware of the complexities of human gender, they’re just too damn binary.
But hen languished until another linguist, Hans Karlgren, revived the new pronoun in 1994. Hen caught on in a number of progressive schools and appeared from time to time in the press, usually with an explainer for readers who hadn’t come across the innovation. Finally, in 2015, the Swedish Academy decided that hen should be added to its official dictionary, and though the word still generates some controversy, hen has become familiar enough that an explanation for the uninitiated is no longer necessary.
Like it or not, for the past couple of decades hen has been filtering into Swedish pop culture. Hen was the sole third-person pronoun in a popular children’s book, Kivi och Monsterhund ("Kivi and the Monster Dog"), a move that generated both positive and negative discussion in Sweden. The outside world finally met hen that same year when the Swedish-Danish television hit Bron/Broen aired as The Bridge on the BBC in the UK and later on Amazon Prime in the US. In a brief scene that offered a respite from catching killers, Hannah Thomsen, a Danish detective, has to have hen explained to her by Saga Norén, her Swedish counterpart. Thomsen then gently teases the humorless Norén for being politically correct. But fate quickly intervenes, and the action once again turns deadly.
Composite screenshot of The Bridge, s3e1 (2015), with English subtitles.
Norén (pictured on the right): So ‘hen’ knows the area? The cameras weren’t hidden.
Thomsen (on the left): Sorry … “hen”? What does that mean?
Norén: It’s a gender-neutral personal pronoun.
Thomsen: What’s wrong with “he” and “she”?
Norén: “Hen” is practical and correct when the sex of the perpetrator is unknown.
Thomsen: Politically correct, at least.
Hen appears as well in 2017 in the Swedish police drama Rebecka Martinsson (streamed on All4 in the UK and on Acorn in the US). In one episode of the show’s first series, a male detective just back from a gender-sensitivity course chides a superior because she did not refer to an unknown killer as hen. Then they too move on to catching killers.
Gender pronouns feature briefly, but significantly, in 2019, in series 22 of the long-running BBC whodunit Silent Witness (this episode is available on Amazon Prime in the US). Here the pronoun use is serious and sensitive as Nick, a suspect in a series of murders at a transgender support center, asks Thomas, the forensic investigator, “What gender pronouns are you going to use for me in your report?” Thomas responds, “What would you like me to use?” And Nick replies, “She, please.” Thomas honors that request.
Nick, in Silent Witness, s22e1, “Two Spirits, pt. 1” (2019).
And hen pops up again in 2017 in series 2 of the Norwegian historical comedy Vikingane, which aired on NRK. In the scene, Ragnar and Arvid discuss the murder of the unidentified body they are looking at. Ragnar refers to the corpse as hen, explaining in response to Arvid’s skeptical raised eyebrow that “it is a more correct term to say ‘hen’ not to step on any toes.” Although hen is Swedish, it slips into Norwegian as well, where it has generated some controversy. The Vikings, who spoke Old Norse, would not have bothered with gender-neutral pronouns, but the anachronism lightens what would otherwise be a somber scene, and it’s consistent with the series’ comic take on medieval history.
Vikingane was re-recorded in English as Norsemen, airing in 2018 on Netflix in both the US and the UK. In the English version of this scene, the pronoun is changed from Swedish/Norwegian hen to a coined English shim, a blend of she and him that appeared as early as 1912 and has been re-invented several times since. To milk the humor, the characters treat the pronoun in a bit more detail:
Ragnar (on the right in the first frame): And the motive is probably the map. There isn’t much else here shim could be after.
Arvid: Shim?
Ragnar: It’s impossible to see if it’s a man or a woman. So I thought it would be best to say shim. In order not to step on any toes. Or maybe shim wanted the map.
Arvid (trying out the new pronoun): For shimself?
What’s up with the appearance of gender pronouns in these pop culture dramas? Incorporating these pronouns into dialogue functions differently from the offensive pronoun joke that I won’t repeat, told by a comedian attempting to revive his career after revelations of sexual harassment, or the mocking student who, given the opportunity to designate a pronoun by his university, chose his majesty. Instead these pronouns appear in The Bridge, Rebecka Martinsson, and Vikingane/Norsemen with gentle humor, and in a serious context in Silent Witness. To me, the strident objections to new pronouns (see my post, “A grammar lesson for Justice Alito”) and their incorporation into dialogue here demonstrate that objections to language change are futile and that pronoun inclusiveness is becoming increasingly normal.
The majority of English language authorities (grammars, dictionaries, usage and style guides) now support the use of singular they or a coined pronoun for a specific person, especially when someone announces their pronouns, a practice that is becoming common in both professional and informal settings.
In addition, pronoun inclusiveness, once primarily an issue for English, is becoming a thing for other languages as well. To cite just one relevant example, although the Språkrådet, the Norwegian Language Council, has found that hen is not well-enough established to be allowed in serious writing—at least not yet—the group does recommend using hen for a person who is nonbinary. Or, as in Vikingane, for when you don’t know the gender of a corpse.
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If you'd like to learn more about the history of gender pronouns, pick up a copy of my new book, What's your pronoun? Beyond he and she, available from Liveright/W.W. Norton here, or wherever you buy or borrow books.
