N HIs article 'Grammatical Categories," the late Benjamin L. Whorf sets up grammatical gender in English as a 'covert' category.2 He bases his argument essentially on the contention that with given names, and occasionally with other nouns (those referring to living beings and in instances traditionally referred to as 'personification,' though he does not use that term), there is observable a concord between the third person singular personal pronoun or possessive (he, him, his; she, her[s]) and the noun it refers to, and between the interrogative-relative what, which, and a 'neuter' antecedent. This interpretation of the situation conflicts with the customary assumption of scientific observers (not of traditional grammars) that English does not have grammatical gender. The present writer disagreed with Whorf's interpretation when the above-mentioned article appeared, but assumed that someone else, perhaps a specialist in the field of English, would discuss the matter further in print. However, since no such discussion has appeared, and since the writer has observed (in private conversation) that a number of others have apparently been convinced by Whorf's reasoning, it seems desirable to set forth briefly the opposing arguments. Whorf's main line of argument is as follows: names like Jane are always substituted by the pronoun she, and names like John by he; therefore, personal names show a feature of (morphologically unindicated, hence 'covert') concord: