Re: Gender of rivers - and other waters.

> Lars Finsen <lars.finsen@...> wrote:
>
> Of course there are many ways to classify nouns, but I think the
> gender systems in many cultures strongly suggest some relation to
> the genders of the deities or spirits inhabiting the physical
> objects. For example, the Germanic Sun is feminine with a masculine
> Moon counterpart, while further south it is often the other way
> around.
One of the wierdest examples of this, IMO, is found in Egyptian
mythology where the sky is a goddess and the earth is a god, quite
the opposite of the IE cultures with which I am familiar.

Also, the deity of the sun in Japanese mythology is a goddess,
Amaterasu-o-mi-kami.

Charlie