List of Genders and Gender Identities, A to Z

Abinary covers any gender wholly unrelated to maleness, masculinity, femaleness or femininity, and nowhere in between them, without necessarily being an absence of gender.

Agender means having no gender.

Agenderfluid describes a gender whose base is agender, with other gendered feelings arriving and leaving around it.

Agenderflux describes a gender that is fully agender throughout, with fluctuating levels of masculinity, femininity or another gender quality laid over it.

Akava'ine describes Cook Islands Māori people assigned male at birth who live and behave as women.

Ambigender names exactly two genders experienced at the same time, without fluidity and without shifting.

Androgyne names a gender that blends male and female or falls between them

Androgynos is a category in rabbinic law for a person with both male and female genitals, and the Mishnah's own summary of it is the most-quoted sentence on the subject: such a person is in some ways like men, in other ways like women, in others like both, and in others like neither.

Aporagender names a gender separate from male, female and anything in between, held with a strong and specific gendered feeling rather than as an absence of one.

Apwint is a Burmese term for people assigned male at birth who openly identify as women and are attracted to men.

Autigender names a gender whose experience is inseparable from being autistic.

Aylonit is a category in rabbinic law for a person identified female at birth who reaches adulthood without the secondary characteristics the law expects, and the Talmud derives the word from ayil, a ram, glossing it as ram-like.

Babaylan is the Visayan name for the shamans of the pre-colonial Philippine islands, an office held predominantly by women and open to men who took on the dress and the roles of women, which makes it a religious office rather than a gender category.

Bakla is a Tagalog word for a person assigned male at birth who takes on a feminine gender expression, and in Filipino usage it names a gender rather than a sexual orientation.

Bigender means having two distinct gender identities, held either at the same time or in alternation.

Binabinaaine, also written pinapinaaine, are people in Kiribati and Tuvalu assigned male at birth who live in a third-gender role.

Bissu are the ritual specialists of the Bugis people of South Sulawesi, and the fifth of the genders Bugis society recognises alongside makkunrai, oroané, calabai and calalai.

Burrnesha names a social role in the northern Albanian highlands, entered by a public and irrevocable oath, in which a person assigned female at birth takes on the dress, work and legal standing of a man in exchange for lifelong celibacy.

Butch describes a masculine presentation, manner and stance, with its roots in lesbian communities.

Chibados, also called quimbandas, were people born male who lived mostly as women among the Ndongo and in other parts of what is now Angola, and who held a religious office.

Cisgender describes a person whose gender identity corresponds to the sex recorded for them at birth.

Cross-dressing means wearing clothes traditionally associated with a different gender, and cross-dresser names a person who does it without implying anything about their gender identity, sexual orientation or motive.

Demiboy names a gender identity that is partly male and partly something else, whatever the person was assigned at birth.

Demiflux describes a gender with one part that holds still and another that fluctuates in intensity.

Demigender describes a partial connection to a gender rather than a whole one.

Demigirl names a gender identity that is partly a girl or a woman and partly something else, held by people of any assignment at birth.

Drag king names a performer, historically a woman, who works in masculine drag and plays male stereotypes for an audience.

Drag queen names a performer, usually a man, who works with costume and makeup to exaggerate the signifiers of femininity in front of an audience.

Egogender names a gender so specific to one person that the only accurate description of it is that person

The Enarei, singular enaree, were Scythian priestesses and soothsayers who were assigned male at birth and who, after what the Scythians understood as a divine transformation of their sex, took up feminine roles and lived as women.

Eunuch names a boy or man who has been castrated, and across almost the whole of the recorded history the castration was performed on him rather than chosen by him.

Ey was coined in 1975 by Christine M. Elverson of Skokie, Illinois, who formed it by dropping the th from they.

Fa'afafine are people in Samoa assigned male at birth who live fa'a fafine, in the manner of a woman.

Fa'afatama are Samoans assigned female at birth who live in the manner of a man.

Fae is a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun that shares its spelling with an English word for the fairy folk.

Fakafifine are people from Niue who were assigned male at birth and have a feminine gender expression, understood in Niue as a third gender specific to the island.

Fakaleiti, usually shortened to leitī, describes Tongans assigned male at birth who live in the manner of a lady.

Femboy describes a feminine presentation worn by a boy or young man, and Collins English Dictionary glosses the noun as a male whose appearance and behavioural traits are regarded as conventionally feminine.

Femme describes a feminine presentation and stance within queer life, and it is the paired term to butch.

Femminiello names a third-gender role in traditional Neapolitan culture, held by people the city understands as male who live in a feminine role, and the word carries no insult: femminielli are conventionally held to bring good luck.

Gala were the lamentation priests of the Sumerian goddess Inanna, and cuneiform records place them among the personnel of both the temples and the palaces of the Mesopotamian city-states.

Galli were the eunuch priests of the Phrygian goddess Cybele, called Magna Mater in Rome, and of her consort Attis, and their cult was taken into the state religion of Rome.

Gender bender names a person whose dress and manner depart from what is expected of their gender, and the deliberate practice of doing so.

Gender questioning covers being unsure about one's own gender, or feeling that the gender assigned at birth does not fully match.

Gender variant is a description applied to people rather than one they apply to themselves.

Gender-nonconforming describes an expression, appearance or behaviour that does not match the norms expected of a person's gender.

Genderfae describes a fluid gender that never includes masculine ones.

Genderfaun describes a fluid gender that never includes feminine ones.

Genderfluid describes a gender identity that shifts rather than staying put.

Genderflux describes a gender whose intensity rises and falls.

Genderless names an absence of gender, and in its gendervoid sense an absence felt as a blank or void where a gender might otherwise be.

Genderpunk names a culture of conscious, active resistance to gender normativity, tied to punk subculture.

Genderqueer describes a gender identity that is neither solely female nor solely male, or is both, or sits somewhere between.

Graygender names a weak, indeterminate or ambivalent connection to gender and to gender expression, rather than a partial connection to any particular gender.

He is the singular masculine third-person pronoun of modern English, and the record behind it is largely a record of an argument about using it for everybody.

Hijra is a gender category across India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, covering people who are transgender, intersex or eunuch and who live in communities organised by a kinship system known as guru-chela, teacher and disciple.

Intergender is used mainly by intersex people for a gender influenced by or connected to being intersex.

Intersex describes people born with variations in sex characteristics that do not fit the typical definitions of male or female.

Ipsogender names an intersex person who identifies with the binary sex they were medically or legally assigned at birth.

It is the singular impersonal third-person pronoun of English, and its paradigm is unusually short: three shapes carry all five word forms.

Juxera names a gender that is similar to female but distinct from it: adjacent rather than partial.

Kathoey is a Thai category for people assigned male at birth who present as transfeminine or effeminate, and it covers more ground than any single English word: trans women, effeminate gay men, and, in older usage, more or less anybody outside the sexual norms of the day.

Khanith names a role on the Arabian Peninsula, in Oman and the United Arab Emirates above all, filled by people assigned male at birth who live between the social positions held by men and by women.

Khawaja sira is the term most Pakistani third-gender people prefer for themselves, covering people assigned male at birth who live as neither male nor female, many of them inside the guru-chela households that also define hijra communities across the region.

Māhū describes people of dual male and female spirit in traditional Hawaiian and Tahitian cultures.

A man is an adult who identifies as male

Maverique describes a gender that is present and specific but takes nothing from male, female or neutral

Maxigender names a claim to as many genders as a person's own life and culture reach, and it exists because some people objected to what the prefix on pangender appears to promise.

Metagender is a word that has been coined independently several times, by people who did not know of each other, for definitions that do not agree.

Meti is a term used in Nepal for a person assigned male at birth who presents and lives femininely, and it sits inside the legal third gender category the Supreme Court of Nepal established in 2007.

Multigender means having more than one gender identity, at the same time or by moving between them at different times.

Muxe is a gender category among the Isthmus Zapotec of Juchitán de Zaragoza, in Oaxaca, for people assigned male at birth who take on feminine dress, work and standing inside Zapotec life.

Mx is a title of courtesy that does not state a gender, used in front of a surname where Mr, Mrs, Miss and Ms would otherwise go, and sometimes with a first name interposed.

Nádleehí is a social and, at times, ceremonial role in Diné (Navajo) culture, and the word translates into English as changing one.

A neopronoun is a third-person personal pronoun coined for a language rather than inherited from it, used in place of he, she or singular they.

Neurogender is the umbrella for genders that can only be described in the context of being neurodivergent.

Neuroqueer was coined as a verb, for the practice of queering neurocognitive norms and gender norms at once, and the adjective, the noun and the identity label all arrived afterwards.

Neutrois describes a gender that is neutral or null: neither man nor woman

Non-binary covers gender identities that are not exclusively male or female.

Non-binary man names somebody who is both non-binary and a man, holding the two together rather than choosing between them.

A nounself pronoun is a third-person singular pronoun built out of an ordinary noun, so that a person referred to as bun is also referred to as buns and bunself.

Omnigender names an identity that takes in all genders, or, on the definition the LGBTQIA+ Wiki calls the most common, almost every gender but not quite.

Outherine is an umbrella for gender qualities separate from masculinity, femininity, androgyny and neutrality alike

Palopa is a Tok Pisin word used in Papua New Guinea and among Papua New Guineans abroad for people whose gender or sexuality falls outside heteronormative expectations.

Pangender describes identifying with a vast range of genders, either as a countless number of separate identities moved between over time, or as a single all-encompassing identity.

Polygender means having several gender identities rather than one, and it began as something considerably wider than that.

A pronoun set is the whole group of forms one pronoun takes across its grammatical roles: subject, object, possessive determiner, possessive pronoun and reflexive.

Proxvir names a gender that sits near male without being male, held as one whole gender rather than as a part of one.

Queer as a gender names a gender identity that cannot be categorised as solely male or female.

Quoigender describes finding the concept of gender inapplicable to oneself, or not meaningfully definable at all.

Raerae names a category of people in French Polynesia, assigned male at birth, who live and present as women, and the word came into use in Tahiti in the 1960s rather than out of the older Polynesian vocabulary.

Saris is the rabbinic term usually rendered into English as eunuch, covering a person assigned male at birth who develops no male secondary characteristics, whether by nature or by castration.

She is the singular feminine third-person pronoun of modern English, and it is the one personal pronoun in the language whose descent from Old English is still disputed.

Sipiniq is an Inuit category for a person understood to have changed physical sex before or at the moment of birth, and who is then socially designated as the sex they are held to have been first.

Sistergirl is a term used by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people for gender-diverse people who have a female spirit and take on female roles within the community, and brotherboy is its coordinate term, for those with a male spirit who take on male roles.

Staticgender is a xenogender described as television static: fuzzy, complicated, incomprehensible.

They is a third-person pronoun that takes a singular or a plural antecedent, and the singular use is older than the objection to it.

Third gender is the term comparative anthropology uses for a socially recognised gender position that is neither man nor woman.

Thon is a gender-neutral English pronoun coined in 1858 by the American composer Charles Crosby Converse, taken from a Scots demonstrative meaning that one.

Tomboy names a girl or young woman who behaves in ways a given culture associates with boys or men, from androgynous or unfeminine dress to activities treated as masculine.

A trans man is a man who was assigned female at birth.

A trans woman is a woman who was assigned male at birth.

Transandrogynous describes a transgender person whose gender is androgynous rather than masculine or feminine.

Transfeminine describes a person assigned male at birth whose gender identity or expression is predominantly feminine.

Transgender describes a person whose gender identity differs from the sex recorded for them at birth.

Transmasculine describes a person assigned female at birth whose gender identity or expression is predominantly masculine.

Transpinay is a Tagalog word for a Filipino trans woman, blending the English trans with Pinay, the endonym for a Filipino woman, and it was made deliberately, by an organisation, to mark trans women off from the broader local gender terms they were being folded into.

Transsexual describes a person whose gender identity is inconsistent with the sex assigned at birth and who seeks to transition permanently, usually with medical help.

Transvestite was coined by the German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld in his 1910 book Die Transvestiten, for people who habitually and voluntarily wore the clothes of the opposite sex.

Travesti names a feminine gender identity specific to parts of South America, held by people assigned male at birth who feminise their bodies, take feminine names and pronouns, and do not necessarily consider themselves women.

Trigender means having three gender identities, experienced together or moved between at different times.

Tumtum is a category in rabbinic legal literature for a person whose sex cannot be determined, because the genitals are hidden, undeveloped or otherwise unreadable.

Two-Spirit is a pan-Indigenous English-language umbrella coined in 1990, used by some Indigenous people in the United States and Canada for those who fill a traditional third-gender or other gender-variant role in their own communities.

Vakasalewalewa is the iTaukei Fijian term for people assigned male at birth who live in the manner of a woman.

Waria is the Indonesian word for trans women, and it is a coinage rather than an inheritance: a portmanteau of wanita, woman, and pria, man, put into circulation by the government in 1978.

Whakawahine is a te reo Māori word for a person assigned male at birth who lives and is known socially as a woman, and Wiktionary glosses it literally as to become a woman.

Winkte is a contraction of the older Lakota word winyanktehca, and the everyday gloss for it is wants to be like a woman.

A woman is an adult who identifies as female

X-gender, x-jendā in Japanese, is a Japanese identity term for a gender that is neither female nor male, or on some accounts both at once.

Xe is a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun that appeared in the Unitarian Universalist magazine UU World on 1 May 1973.

Xenogender describes a gender through something outside the usual vocabulary of gender: an animal, a plant, a colour, a texture, a concept.

Ze is a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun which the Oxford English Dictionary dates to 1864, in the Ladies' Repository.