Data Model

At the core of the standard is a formal data model for pronoun sets. In English, third-person personal pronouns have up to five key forms:

• Subjective (nominative) — the pronoun as the subject of a sentence (e.g. “she is a doctor”).
• Objective (accusative) — the object of a verb or preposition (e.g. “I saw her in the clinic”).
• Possessive adjective (determiner) — before a noun to indicate possession (e.g. “her appointment”).
• Possessive pronoun — standalone possession (e.g. “that appointment was hers”).
• Reflexive — the object refers back to the pronoun’s owner (e.g. “she advocated for herself”).

Many common English sets expand cleanly across these five forms:

Set	Subjective	Objective	Poss. adj.	Poss. pron.	Reflexive
she/her	she	her	her	hers	herself
he/him	he	him	his	his	himself
they/them	they	them	their	theirs	themselves
xe/xem	xe	xem	xyr	xyrs	xemself

These exact forms are confirmed in existing terminology — for instance, HL7’s pronoun value set enumerates she/her/her/hers/herself, he/him/his/his/himself, and they/them/their/theirs/themselves as coded options. Many neopronouns follow similar patterns, though some noun-self or nonstandard sets deviate, so the model remains flexible to accommodate them.

PronounSet schema

A PronounSet object has named fields for each form:

{
  "subjective": "she",
  "objective": "her",
  "possessive_adjective": "her",
  "possessive_pronoun": "hers",
  "reflexive": "herself"
}

A compact form is available for low-bandwidth contexts (e.g. JWTs or other compact payloads):

{
  "sub": "she",
  "obj": "her",
  "p_a": "her",
  "p_pn": "hers",
  "ref": "herself"
}

Storing all five forms lets programs correctly inflect sentences — an email template might insert subjective or choose between possessive_adjective and possessive_pronoun as grammar requires. Keeping the fields separate also disambiguates sets like he/him, where “his” serves as both possessive adjective and possessive pronoun.

The full set of fields and validation rules is published as a JSON Schema in the @openpronoun/schema package (pronoun-set.schema.json).

Multiple pronoun sets

The model must support people who use multiple pronoun sets. Nearly two-thirds of LGBTQ youth who use non-binary pronouns choose combinations of sets (e.g. he+they, she+they) rather than a single set, and many adults use combinations like “she/they” or “he/they” across contexts or interchangeably.

A person’s pronouns are therefore modeled as a collection of PronounSets, not just one. Sets are stored in the order the user prefers them listed, and an optional ranking field may indicate which set is primary (often users have no preference, so ranking is optional). Full and compact key styles may be mixed; the ranking/rnk field expresses ordering.

[
  {
    "subjective": "she",
    "objective": "her",
    "possessive_adjective": "her",
    "possessive_pronoun": "hers",
    "reflexive": "herself",
    "ranking": 2
  },
  {
    "sub": "they",
    "obj": "them",
    "p_a": "their",
    "p_pn": "theirs",
    "ref": "themselves",
    "rnk": 1
  }
]

Special pronoun preferences

Some people don’t specify a conventional set at all, instead using entries like “any pronouns”, “no pronouns”, or “ask me”. These are represented as special cases of a broader PronounPreference type:

• Any pronouns — the user is comfortable with any set. Represented with a tag rather than an exhaustive list; displayed as “Any pronouns”.

  [{ "type": "any" }]

• No pronouns (use name only) — the user does not want pronouns used for them. Systems should avoid inserting pronouns and use the person’s name or a neutral form. A typical label is “No pronouns (use my name)”.

  [{ "type": "none" }]

• Ask me — the user prefers not to store a set and asks others to inquire. Displayed as e.g. “Ask me about my pronouns”.

  [{ "type": "ask" }]

• Unspecified — the user was asked but did not provide a usable set, whether from uncertainty (“unsure”, “don’t know yet”) or a decision not to state (“prefer not to disclose”). This is distinct from none (which is a positive instruction to use the person’s name) and from null/absent (which means no answer was collected at all). Displayed neutrally, e.g. “Unspecified”.

  [{ "type": "unspecified" }]

• Custom freeform — when a user provides pronouns that don’t match a known pattern (or the parser chooses not to parse them), the literal string is stored. The goal is to minimize this by continuously improving the standard’s lexicon.

  [{ "type": "custom", "display": "fae/faer" }]

Combining special preferences with standard sets

Special cases can be combined with — or embedded in — standard PronounSets. The example below contains a custom merged set (fae/him, mixing forms from two sets), a standard they/them set, and the special any token:

[
  {
    "type": "custom",
    "display": "fae/him",
    "subjective": "fae",
    "objective": "him",
    "possessive_adjective": "faer",
    "possessive_pronoun": "his",
    "reflexive": "faerself"
  },
  {
    "subjective": "they",
    "objective": "them",
    "possessive_adjective": "their",
    "possessive_pronoun": "theirs",
    "reflexive": "themselves"
  },
  {
    "type": "any"
  }
]

Optional fields

A PronounSet may carry optional metadata.

Context

A freeform note about when or how a set is used. The implied context of a second set is the inverse of the first, or simply unspecified.

[
  {
    "subjective": "he",
    "objective": "him",
    "possessive_adjective": "his",
    "possessive_pronoun": "his",
    "reflexive": "himself",
    "context": "Only used in professional settings"
  },
  {
    "subjective": "they",
    "objective": "them",
    "possessive_adjective": "their",
    "possessive_pronoun": "theirs",
    "reflexive": "themselves"
  }
]

Privacy

An integer privacy level (privacy/pvc) keyed to the host system’s privacy model. 0 is public (the default if omitted); 1 indicates the set should only be used in private/internal contexts and not displayed publicly. Higher integers may be added for more granular levels (e.g. 2 semi-private, 3 confidential).

[
  {
    "subjective": "she",
    "objective": "her",
    "possessive_adjective": "her",
    "possessive_pronoun": "hers",
    "reflexive": "herself",
    "privacy": 0
  },
  {
    "subjective": "they",
    "objective": "them",
    "possessive_adjective": "their",
    "possessive_pronoun": "theirs",
    "reflexive": "themselves",
    "privacy": 1
  }
]

Language

An ISO 639-1 language code (language/lang, e.g. en, fr, es) for a particular set. If omitted, the system’s primary language is assumed.

[
  {
    "subjective": "she",
    "objective": "her",
    "possessive_adjective": "her",
    "possessive_pronoun": "hers",
    "reflexive": "herself",
    "language": "en"
  },
  {
    "subjective": "ella",
    "objective": "la",
    "possessive_adjective": "su",
    "possessive_pronoun": "la suya",
    "reflexive": "ella misma",
    "language": "es"
  }
]

All of the above fall under a PronounPreference abstraction. In code or schema, this can be modeled as a union type or an object that contains either a structured PronounSet or the optional type fields.

Exclude

A boolean (exclude/exc, default false) marking a set the user explicitly does not want used, while still naming it so consumers know to avoid it. This captures negative preferences like “he/him or she/her, just not they/them”.

[
  {
    "subjective": "he",
    "objective": "him",
    "possessive_adjective": "his",
    "possessive_pronoun": "his",
    "reflexive": "himself"
  },
  {
    "subjective": "she",
    "objective": "her",
    "possessive_adjective": "her",
    "possessive_pronoun": "hers",
    "reflexive": "herself"
  },
  {
    "subjective": "they",
    "objective": "them",
    "possessive_adjective": "their",
    "possessive_pronoun": "theirs",
    "reflexive": "themselves",
    "exclude": true
  }
]

An excluded set MUST NOT be presented as a usable pronoun in display or sentence construction (see Display).

Internationalization consideration

The core model is tailored to English pronouns, but is designed to be extensible via the optional lang field. Other languages have different pronoun grammar — French has il/elle (and plural ils/elles) plus adjective agreement; Chinese spoken pronouns don’t distinguish gender in the third person, though written characters differ. For languages with a similar set of forms, a localized PronounSet can be defined (some languages may need only subjective/objective).

The reference implementations initially target English with the five-form model, while encouraging contributors to propose extensions for other languages. Emerging gender-neutral pronouns (e.g. Swedish hen, German xier/dey/sier) can be accommodated simply as additional pronoun sets with whatever forms the language uses and the appropriate language code. See Internationalization and Localization for more.