-ling is always masculine (I would not call them diminutives, you cannot form them from many words) -chen and -lein (diminutives) are always neuter, they can b

-ling is always masculine (I would not call them diminutives, you cannot form them from many words) -chen and -lein (diminutives) are always neuter, they can be formed from many nouns -heit and -keit, and -ung are always feminine I don't claim that the gender has logical meaning. But for derived words the rules typically hold (I would not be suprised if a few exceptions could be found)