He (pronoun)

"He" is the masculine third-person, singular personal pronoun (nominative case) in Modern English. In traditional forms of English grammar, it is also used as a gender-neutral third-person singular personal pronoun.

Etymology

Old English

"He" has always been the third-person masculine pronoun in English, as this table of the pronouns of Old English shows:

Old English pronouns
NominativeIPAAccusativeDativeGenitive
1stSingular iċ[ɪtʃ]mec / mēmēmīn
Dual wit[wɪt]uncituncuncer
Plural wē[weː]ūsicūsūser / ūre
2ndSingular þū[θuː]þec / þēþēþīn
Dual ġit[jɪt]incitincincer
Plural ġē[jeː]ēowicēowēower
3rdSingularMasculine hē[heː]hinehimhis
Neuter hit[hɪt]hithimhis
Feminine hēo[heːo]hīehierehiere
Plural hīe[hiːə]hīeheomheora

Although the pronoun has always been spelled the same, its Old English pronunciation was closer to that of modern "hay".

Middle English

As the OE table shows, "hine" and "him" were respectively the accusative and dative cases of "he". These oblique forms persisted in Middle English:

Personal pronouns in Middle English
Below each Middle English pronoun, the Modern English is shown in italics (with archaic forms in brackets)
Person / gender Subject Object Possessive determiner Possessive pronoun Reflexive
Singular
First ic / ich / I
I		me / mi
me		min / minen [pl.]
my		min / mire / minre
mine		min one / mi selven
myself
Second þou / þu / tu / þeou
you (thou)		þe
you (thee)		þi / ti
your (thy)		þin / þyn
yours (thine)		þeself / þi selven
yourself (thyself)
Third Masculine he
he		him[lower-alpha 1] / hine[lower-alpha 2]
him		his / hisse / hes
his		his / hisse
his		him-seluen
himself
Feminine sche[o] / s[c]ho / ȝho
she		heo / his / hie / hies / hire
her		hio / heo / hire / heore
her		-
hers		heo-seolf
herself
Neuter hit
it		hit / him
it		his
its		his
its		hit sulue
itself
Plural
First we
we		us / ous
us		ure[n] / our[e] / ures / urne
our		oures
ours		us self / ous silve
ourselves
Second ȝe / ye
you (ye)		eow / [ȝ]ou / ȝow / gu / you
you		eower / [ȝ]ower / gur / [e]our
your		youres
yours		Ȝou self / ou selve
yourselves
Third From Old English heo / hehis / heo[m]heore / her--
From Old Norse þa / þei / þeo / þoþem / þoþeir-þam-selue
modern theythemtheirtheirsthemselves
  1. Dative case, indirect object
  2. Accusative case, direct object

Many other variations are noted in Middle English sources due to difference in spellings and pronunciations. See Francis Henry Stratmann (1891). A Middle-English dictionary. [London]: Oxford University Press. and A Concise Dictionary of Middle English from A.D. 1150 TO 1580, A. L. Mayhew, Walter W. Skeat, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1888.

Hence in modern English the dative form "him" took on the accusative functions of accusative "hine" ([hinə]).

Usage

Original and modern scope

As in many languages, in Old English each noun had a grammatical gender (masculine, feminine or neuter), and a pronoun was generally (but not always) selected according to its antecedent's grammatical gender. Thus, because "dæg" ([dæj], 'day') was masculine, one would refer to the day as "he".[1][2] Since in Modern English nouns have no grammatical gender (though suffixes like "-or" or "-ess" may indicate the gender of their referents), only the gender of the referent determines the pronoun to use.

Generic pronoun

The generic "he" serves as a pronoun whose antecedent is any noun denoting a social category under which both sexes fall:

  • A good student always does 'his' homework.
  • If someone asks you for help, give it to 'him'.
  • When a customer argues, always agree with 'him'.

Ann Fisher first prescribed the generic "he" in her 1745 grammar book A New Grammar. It was thereafter often prescribed in manuals of style and school textbooks until around the 1960s.[3]

Other

When speaking of God, Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit, some Christians use the capitalised forms "He", "His" and "Him" in writing, and in some translations of the Bible.

References
  1. Peter S Baker, Introduction to Old English Archived 10 April 2007 at the Wayback Machine, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003).
  2. Greville Corbett, Gender, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
  3. Patricia T. O'Conner; Stewart Kellerman (21 July 2009). "All-Purpose Pronoun". The New York Times.

Further reading

See also

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