Vol. 3, No. 1, 2018 De, den, hen, and the rest A pilot study of the use of gender-neutral and nonbinary/genderqueer pronouns in Danish Ehm Hjorth Miltersen Aarhus Universitet 201405358@post.au.dk, e.hjorth@hotmail.com Abstract The Danish language, like many other ‘Western’ languages, does not have any human-referent gender neutral third person singular pronoun that is “officially” recognized in the sense that it is taught in language classes, used in public documents, or included in most dictionaries. Nevertheless, many individuals prefer being referred to with pronouns that do not designate that individual as either female or male, which prompts linguistic innovation and creativity. This article is a pilot study presenting the initial results of a 7-question survey investigating the use of gender neutral and nonbinary/genderqueer pronouns in Danish. Based on 75 responses, it is found that the pronouns most people prefer others to refer to them with are de ‘they’ (the third person plural), den ‘it’ (the third person singular common gender, conventionally used to refer to objects and non-pet animals), and hen (third person singular neologism), as well as hun ‘she’ and han ‘he’. The survey targeted two groups of respondents: 1) Nonbinary/genderqueer individuals and 2) Women and men who wish to be referred to with pronouns other than hun/han. The final section of the article suggests several topics for further research of gender neutral and nonbinary/genderqueer pronouns, both in Danish and in other languages. Introduction In many languages, particularly in what is commonly referred to as ‘the Western world’, female persons are traditionally referred to with one specific pronoun (‘she’ in English) and male persons with another (‘he’). However, a person may wish to be referred to with other pronouns, such as gender neutral or nonbinary/genderqueer pronouns (see e.g. Miltersen 2016:39; see section 2.3 of the present article for terminology). In many languages, there is not a conventional or normative option for gender neutral pronouns. In the case of Danish, there are four third person singular pronouns that are recognized by existing grammars, dictionaries, and government institutions: han (commonly used about male persons and sometimes male animals), hun (commonly used about female persons and sometimes female animals), den (common grammatical gender; commonly used about objects and animals) and det (neuter grammatical gender; commonly used about objects and some animals). In other words, the Danish language does not have a conventionally recognized gender-neutral pronoun to be used about persons– to my knowledge, no grammar describes options for referring to persons of unknown or non-male and non-female gender (cf. Hansen and Heltoft 2011:555; Jensen 2016). Individuals who wish to be referred to with something other than the