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When the referent is a person of unknown or unspecified sex, several different options are possible: use of he or she, he/she, s/he, etc. alternation or random mixture of she and he; use of singular they (common especially in informal language) use of it (normally only considered when the referent is a young child)
In languages with pronominal gender, problems of usage may arise in contexts where a person of unspecified or unknown social gender is being referred to but commonly available pronouns are gender-specific. Different solutions to this issue have been proposed and used in various languages.
It can also be used for non-human animals of unspecified sex, though they is common for pets and other domesticated animals of unspecified sex, especially when referred to by a proper name [160] (e.g. Rags, Snuggles). Normally, birds and mammals with a known sex are referred to by their respective male or female pronoun (he and she; him and her).
The page, which still appears in Google search results, said that people applying for or updating a passport could select male (M), female (F), unspecified or another gender identity (X) as the ...
In the singular, however, the issue frequently arises when a person of unspecified or unknown gender is being referred to. In this case it the Singular they has been traditional. Since the 18th century it has been prescribed to use the masculine (he), but other solutions are now often preferred—see Gender-neutral language.
Before that, however, the option already existed, and was declared on printed and typed forms in the old "cover model" notebooks green". Following the international standard, the "unspecified" option is represented in the passport with the letter X, instead of the letters M or F, for male or female, respectively.
This occurs in English with the third-person singular pronouns, where (simply put) he is used when referring to a man, she to a woman, singular they to a person whose gender is unknown or unspecified at the time that the pronoun is being used or to a person who does not identify as either a man or a woman, and it to something inanimate or an ...
A second unspecified person would be called Nowak ("Newman"), with the choice of first name being left to the author's imagination, often also Jan for a man; this surname is unisex. Jan is one of the most popular male first names in Polish, and Kowalski and Nowak are the most popular Polish surnames.