Two related questions about gender.

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

This was kicked off by the last post.

1. In linguistics, nouns are said to have natural or grammatical gender (this is not an exclusive "or"). Natural gender refers to the actual sex of the object, and grammatical gender refers to the class of a noun. What grammatical gender are words like папа? They are declined like feminine nouns, but given masculine modifiers. And is there a term for this?

2. Are there any instances where nouns that are naturally feminine appear masculine? I've only seen it the other way around.

[Edit] Thank you for all your quick responses!

Comments

[kasak.livejournal.com]

I don't know of any instances where feminine nouns appear masculine, but I am aware of one off the top of my head where a masculine noun is neuter.

Морозко.

That's the name of the Russian version of Jack Frost. It's neuter, but obviously refers to a male, since Морозко is not an "it."

Just something more strange for you to think about.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Морозко seems to be more Ukrainian-styled. Ukrainian last names are like this: кто - Петренко, кого - Петренка, кому - Петренке, and he's still a "he".