Queendom And Kingdom

[David]

With the passing of Queen Elizabeth II (may she rest in peace), a linguistic question arose among friends of mine about nomenclature. They remarked on the strangeness of referring to a king of the United Kingdom for the first time in their lifetimes. Then one of my friends wondered about why we weren't also changing from United Queendom to United Kingdom.

There are usage reasons why United Kingdom would be used even under a queen. Kingdom in English has long referred to the "monarchical state or government; a political entity with a king or queen as its head" (OED, "kingdom, n.," def. 3), and a state name that switched based on the gender of its monarch would be peculiar. The masculine term has long been favored as the general one.

However, that would not necessarily prevent the usage of queendom to refer to England in the UK in some contexts, especially as they have seen several reigning queens: Mary, Elizabeth I, Mary II, Anne, Victoria, and Elizabeth II. Queendom has been attested in the OED since 1603 ("queendom, n."), though all the OED examples refer to contexts that are matriarchal (Amazons, bees). Have writers or commentators ever referred to England or the UK as a queendom? If so, in what sense was that used?

In researching this answer, I was surprised to find that the word queendom was used in several contexts. I have traced three kinds of usage in relation to England or the United Kingdom: referential usage, usage comparing "United Queendom" to "Kingdom" explicitly, and usage punning on queen in reference to gay men.

Some uses seem merely to acknowledge that the ruler in power is a queen. In the poem "The Prophecy, 1703," (in Poems on Affairs of State, 1716) the punchline of the poem is that after a bunch of strange things happen in England and on the international stage,

A national law, enforcing the allotment of one rood of land for a garden, at a fair rent, to all who should apply for it, upon all parishes throughout the United Queendom, would, in my opinion, greatly relieve the distress of the working classes. (The Fleet Papers, 19 November 1842, p. 2)

The most common results in recent decades use the United Kingdom as an example of a pecularity: why is it not "United Queendom"? They may approach the question from a linguistic sense or a more explicitly feminist one. For instance:

There is still no 'United Queendom' - nor yet any sign of a 'British Republic'. All this is particularly remarkable given the recent preponderance of long-lived female monarchs (Victoria and Elizabeth II) and the recurrently shaky position of the British monarchy as a whole. (Rob Pope, Studying English, 2013).

... all I knew about the UK was that they had a queen (so why wasn't it called the United Queendom, I wondered?), and they had a lot of tanning salons. (Elizabeth Ezra, Ruby McCracken: Tragic Without Magic, 2017).

In the United Kingdom, the gay traveller is seen as a lucrative market segment such that in 2006 VisitBritain, which is the official tourist agency for the United Kingdom, launched a marketing campaign that was aimed specifically at the gay travel consumer. In its Internet advertising message, VisitBritain declared: 'Welcome to the United Queendom of Great Britain ... with our proud gay history, cutting edge culture and fashion, flamboyant cities and pulsating nightlife, isn't it time you came out ... to Britain?' (Donna Chambers, in New Perspectives in Caribbean Tourism, 2008)

I thought it would be an interesting question or exercise to try to translate this word into Spanish, since the Spanish words for king and queen (rey and reina, respectively) are so similar that is a challenge to deconstruct "reino" etymologically and reconstruct it in a way that a "queendom" is unambiguously distinguishable from "kingdom".

Once there was a young princess who, when she grew tired of beating her head against the male power structure at her castle, would relax by walking into the woods and sitting beside a small pond [...]

To clarify further, this question tries to put you in the shoes of the translator, having to find a word in Spanish for "queendom", having to preserve the connotations of a queendom of being a queen-centric and not a king-centric (male-centric) form of rulership.

I'm not entirely convinced, but given that Spanish rey comes from Latin rex, which gave regnum (Spanish reino), then from Latin regina (Spanish reina) we could have reginanum that could give a hypothetical Spanish reginano, or maybe a simplified version such as rgino, or even reinano, closer to reina.

Now, if a land ruled by a king is a kingdom, a land ruled by a queen can be a queendom. However, what are the equivalents for other titles? A duke rules a duchy, but what about a duchess? If I were to go Holy Roman Empire on this world and have a large variety of titles each with their own names for the ruled areas, I would need equivalent names of the locations. Since this world is explicitly matriarchal, male-by-default terms such as 'kingdom', 'duchy', and 'county' can't be utilized, so I'm wondering if there is a standard set of terms such as 'queendom' for other titles.

The problem you're going to face is that the default gender of male has been enshrined into our language for so long that most of the terms we use to describe a female version of something is an extension of the male form.

Even the term Woman allegedly comes from a compounding of terms in Old English and more or less means 'Wife - human', or female human1. Female actors used to be called actresses, 'ess' being a common way of denoting that the person, vocation or rank in question is the female version.

If you want to change the structure to a matriarchy by default, the best way to do that is with a con-lang (constructed language) that starts out with a default term for a woman, then comes up with common variations for the male version of it. Let's say that for a male, we add a suffix like 'ire' for the male specific version. Then your duchy can stay as is, your Duke is likely the woman, and the 'Duchire' would be the man.

You could use Queendom by default and that makes a bit of sense as the terms sound far enough apart that Queen doesn't appear to be a derivation of the word King (although there is bound to be a link in their etymology) but the important thing is that if you want your world to consider women to be the default gender and men the partners or holders of a position when there is no suitable woman to hold the role, you're actually best restructuring your language to suit the problem. That way, the prejudice is baked into the semantic structure of your language.

1. Thanks to AlexP for additional information on this, including the previous prefix that fell into disuse - were, like in Werewolf. This could be used to deliver terms like Man (being default woman) and wereman as the male version.

Women can be kings too. The first thing that came to mind when I read this question was King Jadwiga of Poland, who was, in fact, a woman. I googled the etymology of king and it seems that the root words of king don't have anything to do with being male, so you don't need to worry about changing the word to something gender-neutral. So your female leaders can be called kings, and their lands can be called their kingdoms. However, you should consider that this may confuse some readers (or viewers or players or whatever else you have).

A borders of a realm or kingdom are defined as the land ruled by a king/queen. It is quite unusual for the definition to work this way, with the person defining the domain. In other cases, the borders of the land are defined independently of the person ruling them.Thus a king would normally define an area of land such as a county/barony/duchy and give it to an ally, making the person a count, baron or duke/duchess. In the case of empires, the empire is normally named after the conquering territory (British empire, Roman empire) with the occupied territories retaining their own names.

As noted by Tim B County and Duchy have no significant gender bias. Nor does Empire. Patriarchal tradition is shown in the fact that the neutral sounding Emperor and Count are understood to be male (unless modified with an -ess ending.) In a matriarchical society, it would make sense for the female rulers of a county, barony or empire to be counts, barons or emperors.

I would note however, that there is nothing to stop you inventing your own names for rulers or territories, for which you can invent your own grammar. For a particularly silly example see _Adventure_Game . This featured a (male) ruler called the Rangdo (ficticious title) of Arg (ficticious territory) who was a shapeshifter, who normally appeared in the form of a very angry houseplant.

Altthouh the word kingdom can be used for male or female, I would prefer a word queendom for a queen and kingdom for a king. The English language is a progressive one and new words can be created. So, queedom for me.!

And four: IN YOUR KINGDOM, EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE. So there is no limitation to the possibilities in your kingdom. You can create whatever you choose to create. There is an infinite supply and, in your kingdom, everything is possible: rich or poor; sad or ugly. Everything is possible.

Six: KINGDOMS TEND TO BE STABLE. Now, that sounds like a good thing, right? Would you want your kingdom all over the place? No! Kingdoms tend to be stable, and the thing that we need to remember is: The longer your kingdom takes a certain form, the more energy it takes to move it in a new direction. Okay?

And I invite you to open your heart, your mind, your soul to the one presence and the one power. And I want you to hear the rain. [Pouring rain hitting the roof is audible] And every drop is the good that God has for you. Every drop is the life that God is offering you. And there is no limit. The blessings of God, too numerous to count, desire to fill your life today. In the name and through the power of the Living Christ, we give thanks. And so it is. Amen.

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