Editing Grammatical gender (section)

==== Differentiation of personal names ====
[[File:Spanish names&nouns ending in a Statistics.png|thumb|right|Statistical data on the Spanish nouns and names ending in ''a'']]

Given names are proper nouns and they follow the same gender grammatical rules as common nouns. In most Indo-European languages female grammatical gender is created using an "a" or an "e" ending.{{citation needed|date=April 2019}}

Classical Latin typically made a grammatical feminine gender with {{lang|la|-a}} ({{lang|la|silva}} "forest", {{lang|la|aqua}} "water") and this was reflected in feminine names originating in that period, like Emilia. Romance languages preserved this characteristic. For example, in Spanish, approximately 89% of nouns that end in ''-a'' or -''á'' are classified as feminine; the same is true for 98% of given names with the ''-a'' ending.<ref>[https://blog-en.namepedia.org/2015/11/why-most-european-names-ending-in-a-are-female/ Namepedia Blog – Why Most European Names Ending in A Are Female]</ref>

In the Germanic languages the female names have been Latinized by adding ''-e'' and ''-a'': Brunhild, Kriemhild and Hroswith became Brunhilde, Kriemhilde and Hroswitha.
Slavic feminine given names: Olga (Russian), Małgorzata (Polish), Tetiana (Ukrainian), Oksana (Belarusian), Eliška (Czech), Bronislava (Slovak), Milica (Serbian), Darina (Bulgarian), Lucja (Croatian), Lamija (Bosnian) and Zala (Slovenian).