hir

Hir is a pronoun that can serve the same grammatical function as him or her (as in I gave hir the message) OR his or her (as in This is hir book), except that it’s gender-neutral. Hir is typically used by people who identify as nonbinary or genderqueer, meaning that their gender identify falls outside of the strict binary of only male or only female.

For those who identify in one of these ways and who are deciding which pronouns to use, there are a lot of options.

Some pronouns similar to hir include zir and xir (both of which can be used in ways equivalent to both nonbinary them and nonbinary their).

However, it should be noted that these shouldn’t be considered synonyms of hir in the sense that they are interchangeable when referring to the same person—the pronouns the person has specified are the ones that should be used.

Hir is often used as part of the xe/hir/hir set of pronouns, but it is sometimes also used as part of other, similar sets, such as ze/hir/hir.

In the next section, we’ll break down some of the nonbinary pronoun sets that people use.