An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics
English-French-Persian

In some languages (not in English, nor in Persian) a set of two or more grammatical categories (called → masculine, → feminine, and → neuter) into which nouns, pronouns, and adjectives are divided. For example, French, Spanish, and Italian have two genders, masculine and feminine (shown, for example, in French by the use of le and la, respectively); German and Russian have three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter. Ancient Iranian languages had three genders, like Sanskrit and Greek.

From M.E. gendre, from O.Fr. gendre, from stem of L. genus "race, stock, family; kind, rank, order; species."

Žâné "race, species," ultimately from Proto-Ir. *zan- "to be born," cf. Av. za(n)- "to give birth; to be born;" related to Pers. zâdan, akin to L. genus, as above, → generate; the transformation of z into ž, as in nežâd, → race.