Why are ships and cars referred to with the pronouns she/her? The English language doesn't really refer to things as "masculine" or "feminine". The fact that we personify these inanimate objects as women and give them female names, doesn't sit right with me. Research says that this has a variety of reasons, ranging from viewing a vessel as a motherly, womb-like, life sustaining figure, to jokingly likening a ship to a woman who is "expensive" to keep and needs a man to guide her, and a lick of paint to look good.