"because they contain humans (and females have a womb)." While I like the theory, its cute, I dont know that that's true. L'automobile is male in Italian and S

"because they contain humans (and females have a womb)." While I like the theory, its cute, I dont know that that's true. L'automobile is male in Italian and Spanish. And its easy for a native speaker in either language to come up with numerous examples. In fact gender really is just grammar. We shouldn't see much into it trying to project ourselves into it. Otherwise, why can the same object have different genders through synonyms? Again: La macchina L'automobile. La yerba (granted in Spanish its lost its meaning as grass) El cesped La nave Il barco La embarcación El bote Or changes from the addition of a mere diminutive: Il banco La bancarella Il barco La barchetta Gender is just a classification, largely binary (although Spanish retains the neuter) that got the unfortunate sexual labels of male and female