This is even more interesting because prior to the 1920s 他 was a gender neutral third person pronoun. And in ancient Chinese 也 was probably pronounced different

This is even more interesting because prior to the 1920s 他 was a gender neutral third person pronoun. And in ancient Chinese 也 was probably pronounced differently to today's yě, perhaps more like the ā of tā. A great resource for looking up the history of individual characters is Wiktionary: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E4%BB%96 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E4%BB%96 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E4%B9%9F https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E4%B9%9F Wiktionary is neat because it also shows you pronunciations in several different Chinese languages (Mandarin, Cantonese, Minnan, Hakka etc) and the relationship to Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese, if it's there.