Linguists do refer to "gender" as "noun class". In languages where noun classes happen to align with gender, reffering to them as gender has stuck around. It i

Linguists do refer to "gender" as "noun class". In languages where noun classes happen to align with gender, reffering to them as gender has stuck around. It is true that noun classes tend to make a gender distinction, so there is likely something innate in human language about that.