E/em (Spivak) pronouns: forms, history and examples
E, em, eir, eirs, emself. One letter away from ey/em, and often mixed up with it.
The forms
| Subject | e |
|---|---|
| Object | em |
| Possessive before a noun | eir |
| Possessive on its own | eirs |
| Reflexive | emself (sometimes eirself) |
In a sentence
- E is leaving at five.
- I will give em the key tomorrow.
- Eir sister lives next door.
- The umbrella by the door is eirs.
- E made emself a sandwich.
The forms and how to say them
E is the subject, em the object, eir the determiner, eirs stands alone and emself is the reflexive, with singular verbs: e is, e was, e has. At the start of a sentence, e becomes E.
Pronouns.page gives e as "ee", em as in them without the th, and eir as "air".
UW-Milwaukee's chart gives the reflexive as eirself rather than emself. Both appear; use the person's version.
Spivak or Elverson?
There are two closely related sets. Spivak pronouns are e/em/eir/eirs/emself. Elverson pronouns are ey/em/eir/eirs/emself, made by dropping the th from they, them and their, and they are older: Christine M. Elverson proposed them in 1975, winning a contest run by a Chicago association of business communicators. The Gender Census notes that the two are often mistaken for each other.
The difference is only the subject, e or ey. If someone uses one, the other is a slip, and the fix is the same as for any slip.
Where the name comes from
The set is named after the mathematician Michael Spivak, who used a capitalised version (E, Em, Eir) in The Joy of TeX, a typesetting manual. Sources disagree on the year: the Gender Census says 1982, Wikipedia says 1983 and Pronouns.page says 1990. The lowercase set spread through LambdaMOO, an online text-based world, after a programmer added spivak as a gender setting in 1991 and players took it up.
It was not the first attempt. Dennis Baron found e, em and es proposed as early as 1841, and Wikipedia describes the history of these forms as tangled, with similar sets invented independently more than once.
How common it is
In the 2025 Gender Census, 3.9% chose Spivak e/em and 4.4% chose Elverson ey/em. Small numbers, from a self-selected and mostly young sample, but steady ones.
If you slip
Say the right word and keep going. The glossary entry on misgendering explains why that is all it takes, and neopronouns puts sets like this in context.
Questions people ask
How do you pronounce Spivak pronouns?
E sounds like ee, em like the end of them, and eir like air.
What is the difference between e/em and ey/em?
Only the subject. Spivak uses e, Elverson uses ey. The other forms, em, eir, eirs and emself, are the same.
Is it e is or e are?
E is. Spivak pronouns take singular verbs.
Why are they called Spivak pronouns?
After the mathematician Michael Spivak, who used a capitalised version in a TeX typesetting manual. The name stuck after an online community adopted the set in the 1990s.