Wordnerd's thread about gender-specific endings of words describing occupations causes me to ask --

What, other than gender, has made the difference in suffixes for occupations?‎

‎“or”: actor, orator, administrator, advisor, conductor, translator, legislator, sculptor, ‎pastor, author, doctor (although those last three probably aren’t really suffixes?)‎

‎“er”: adviser, carpenter, retailer, teacher, photographer, gardener, landscaper, drummer, ‎lawyer, writer, banker, baker, engineer, financier, dancer, choreographer, lecturer, butler, ‎stenographer, singer, composer‎

‎“ist”: typist, florist, horticulturist, linguist, manicurist, archeologist, artist, pianist‎

‎“ian”: librarian, theologian, technician‎

‎“anic”: Mechanic

‎“ie”: Bookie

No suffix at all: nurse, guide, attorney, agent, cook, chef, priest, nun, athlete (or perhaps ‎‎“ete” is the suffix?)‎

And why do some occupations give gender-specific endings:‎
Salesman, saleswoman; bondsman‎

Why: Senator, Congressman or Congresswoman, Representative‎
Why not: “Senative”? “Congressor”? “Representman”‎

Why do English speakers use:‎
Masseuse, masseur, chauffeur?‎

While we’re at it, why are residents of geographic areas labeled in the ways they are?‎
New Yorker, New Englander
Iowan, Ohioan, Chicagoan, European, Mexican, German‎
Oregonian, Washingtonian, Italian, Norwegian‎
Spaniard
Englishman or Englishwoman

‎“anic”: Mechanic

You've split the suffix from its root incorrectly: mechanic via Latin from Greek μηχανικος (mēkhanikos) 'mechanical' fr. μηχανη (mēkhanē) 'machine'.

These kinds of nouns are called agentive nouns. My favorite bit of gender-specific wandering occured between Old English and Middle English. The nominal agentive suffix for feminine agents in Old English was -estre (modern -ster), as in the proper names Webster (weaver), Brewster (brewer), Baxter (baker), etc., which were all originally female trades and such; see the A-H entry for pollster. One that remained feminine is spinster. After the Norman invasion, and influx of French vocabulary, this ending was reanalysed as the masculine agentive, similar to the -or endings that had come down from Latin. Then the ending -ess was added to make the formerly feminine, but now masculine agentive nouns, feminine again. So, we get semstress along the lines of actor ~ actress. This ending had come from a single non-native Greek word basilissa for queen and spread through Latin to other IE languages.

quote:

No suffix at all: nurse

When I was teaching at DePaul, we had a President who was a linguist wannabe. He started this long, drawn out discussion because the name of our profession ends with an "ing," like "engineering," but not like "medicine." He even wrote an analytical paper on it (I wish I had it today). It was a long time ago, but my recollection is that he thought the "ing" made the ours more of a technical profession, like engineering. Believe me, that irritated the whole nursing department, and we spent way too much time trying to refute that analysis.