Anime and Eevee

But "Joan" is still weird, because it's like that for no clear reason -- the original masculine/feminine pair here is like Johannes/Johanna, which explains nothing! It ends up in German as Johann and Johanna, and stress changes can induce vowel changes, but you'd expect that to work the other way round, with the unstressed O becoming shorter, so it seems to just be that "John" and "Joan" appeared at different times and the need to distinguish them kept the latter from drifting as far as the former. You can see the same general thing happening with "Steve" and "Steph", with the opposite gender/vowel length relationship.

So this isn't very systematic, obviously, and it hardly ever happens. But isn't it tempting to imagine us adopting a convention of gendering names by ablaut?

Bill (m.) -> Beele (f.)

Jeff (m.) -> Jafe (f.)

Bob (m.) -> Bobe (f.)

Dan (m.) -> Dane (f.)

Mike (m.) -> Make (f.)

Greg (m.) -> Graygue (f.)

Keith (m.) -> Kayth (f.)

Scott (m.) -> Scote (f.)

James (m.) -> Jymes (f.)

On November 19th, 1789, Archduchess Maria Anna of Austria died. She was the second born child, and second daughter, of Maria Theresa and Francis I.

Deemed ineligible for marriage because of a physical disability, she had instead become an Abbess, which was a typical path for Royal Women who didn’t marry.

Her health began deteriorating in the winter of 1788, causing a shortness of breath and the inability for her to move without a wheelchair. She died the following year, leaving her entire inheritance to the monastery in Klagenfurt, where she had lived for many years. Her last words were said to have been:

“It is probably a good country, I’ve had it ever loving. There are good people with whom I lived happily and I leave with difficulty.”

Native American History Month / Figures ➵Weetamoo

“A severe and proud dame she was, bestowing every day in dressing herself neat as much time as any of the gentry of the land: powdering her hair, and painting her face, going with necklaces, with jewels in her ears, and bracelets upon her hands. When she had dressed herself, her work was to make girdles of wampum and beads.”