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IJBM: the word "heroine"
The major reason this bugs me: Why do we have to basically append a special suffix in the case that the heroic character is female? The heck with that nonsense, I'm just going to refer to female heroic characters with the term "hero".
The minor reason this bugs me: It is a homonym of "heroin".
Comments
It's because we append special suffixes to female roles.
Female. Woman. Actress. Baroness.
Gendered suffixes are nothing new.
Also i pronounce it as "hee-roh-een". I'm not sure why you folks choose to pronounce it as "heh-roh-ehn".
Well, technically, "female" and "woman" aren't suffixes. And I'm not sure about "female" but I remember reading that male version of "woman" is actually "wereman" and "man" used to be gender-neutral, or something like that.
But yes, I feel it'd be nice if we just used "actor" for both actors and actresses (so I wouldn't have to be constantly leery and reword using "voice talent" or "voiced by" etc. instead in templates). Same goes with Baron (as a title) -- I hadn't thought of that one, but it makes sense. Same goes for Duke, Emperor, etc..
Fun fact: primary protagonist characters in the Fire Emblem games, who are nobles, have character class "Lord", even if they are female.
You should also consider that female characters in "hero" roles isn't all that common in popular media and such. At least not as common as male characters in such roles. And I think there is some usage of "heroine" to mean "lead female character" regardless of whether or not they do much of anything "heroic". (Although that might be more common in places with a lot of Engrish. i.e. Japan)
Is that actually rare or anything? I know Heroes of Might and Magic IV (and probably other games in that series) don't adjust Hero class names according to gender, so you have things like females with a "Priest" or "Lord" title. And somehow, there's a Hero class called "Witch King", which sounds neither gender-specific nor gender-neutral. Also, I guess that game uses "Hero" as a gender-neutral term.
Eh, I have far more of an issue with patrilineal surnames since those have led to no end of stupidity from Henry VIII to Chinese gendercide.
For some reason, I never had a problem with heroine. It rolls off the tongue nicely.