1055: Feminine Endings (IE) Oct 29, 2017

Looking at feminine nouns and given names, and the adjectives and pronouns that agree with them in Indo-European languages, especially in those from Europe, there is an tremendous amount ending in '-a' and '-e', while there is not such a broad trend for masculine or neuter words. The exact pronunciation of which varying slightly from language to language, but usually it is close to [a] or [ǝ]. In Spanish for instance, around 89% of feminine nouns end with '-a', and in given names the number rises to 98%. In Romance languages, this quality comes from the predecessor Latin, for which many feminine nouns and their adjectival and pronominal counterparts ended in '-a', as did many given names, a number of which were originally words anyway. Nevertheless, the trend among other language families such as Germanic or Slavic languages, while less prevalent in nouns, is still quite noticeable in given names. Some of the proper nouns would have ended in '-a' or '-e' naturally, but also some gained the ending from external influences (often Latin), such as the Germanic 'Brunhilde' or 'Hroswitha' which were originally 'Brunhild', and 'Hroswith' before they became Latinized. Around the world, plenty of masculine nouns or traditionally masculine names end in '-a', and this pattern is really just one of certain groups of a specific language family.