German gender
The reasons why words take the gender they do, in German or any other language with grammatical gender, is a mystery to me and, I suspect, to everyone else. There are a few formal rules in German, like the fact that any word with a diminutive suffix is neuter and hence, Fraülein, Mädchen, and Bübchen (young woman, girl, little boy) are all neuter and, structly speaking, if substituted by a pronoun should be referred to as "it". Different languages don't even go by the same rules. While "sun" is masculine and "moon" is feminine in the Romance languages, it's the reverse in German. Go figure. Maybe someone (Nicholas, are you there?) can shed some light or point to a site for info. on this question.