The Eucharist is Feminine in Spanish?

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I know this is weird and insignificant. But why is the Eucharist “la Eucaristía” in Spanish? If it is the blood and body of Christ why has the Spanish language made it feminine? I’m sorry. I know this is a dumb question
 
It’s simply grammar. Words in many Romance languages or languages with Latin roots (Spanish, French, Italian) have gender. It can be confusing but it does not mean that Spanish speakers mean that Jesus is feminine. Because English is gender-neutral, it can be difficult for English-only speakers to grasp the concept, but no disrespect or subversive meaning is intended!
 
bluerose said:
Words in many Romance languages or languages with Latin roots (Spanish, French, Italian) have gender.
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Yes, In French, “l’Eucharistie” is also a feminine word.

We don’t have the gender neutral, so objects and things are either masculine or feminine. If there is both people or objects of the two genders, masculine win.

(So, out of topic, at least we do not have the possibilty yet to call people with a gender neutral pronoun…)
 
I hope you are not offense with my oriented out-of topic.

Sorry to disgress!

But all that do not answers your original question of semantic: why La Eucaristia" is a femine pronum?

i don’t know… A etymologist is need!
 
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I have perhaps an answers. Not sure, but I try,

The Eucharist come from a classical greek name : [εὐχαριστία] eukharistía = thanksgiving.

The french translation is “action de grâce”. And “action” is a feminine word.

So perhaps, it is the reason?
 
Well, the word in Greek is grammatically feminine. They are probably taking their cues from that.
 
Well… I think you should really look at the Greek and Latin instead of French. What’s the Latin gender? Also, is the Greek name feminine, because Greek has it too? If I’m not mistaken, the Greek word is feminine.

To the OP - the only time that gender switches with sex is for pronouns and names. La Eucaristia isn’t a pronoun or name.

As you can see from @Anicette’s post, the Spanish word is almost a direct import from the Greek.

God bless
 
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Not just Spanish, it is feminine in French, Italian and Portuguese. But it is neutral in German.
 
It’s “eucharistia” in Latin, from the Greek “εὐχαριστία”. So it’s feminine in both Latin and Greek.
 
The word “Eucharist” is translated literally as “Thanksgiving” from Greek (the Pilgrim’s named the holiday for the sacrament!). The term predates Christianity, so the concept of giving thanks was defined as feminine some number of thousands of years ago, and that’s what we got.
 
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In general,the nouns ending in - a in Spanish are feminine. Therefore ,the corresponding article is " la".
There are exceptions. But this is a simple general.rule
la mesa,la silla,la casa,la tierra,la ventana …and so on.
 
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Let me think.
In French the nouns ending in - ie are feminine.
L’ Eucharistie
La folie
La bourgeoisie
La boulangerie

Suffixes again…
 
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mr.p said:
I know this is weird and insignificant. But why is the Eucharist “la Eucaristía” in Spanish? If it is the blood and body of Christ why has the Spanish language made it feminine? I’m sorry. I know this is a dumb question
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I’ve studied French and Spanish and would reiterate what others are saying without the grammar.

On a philosophical level, are you assuming that the Eucharist is some how a masculine endeavor or concept, or that it couldn’t otherwise be feminine?
 
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Dan_Defender said:
But it is neutral in German.
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Having taken some German, as most German words, there is no real rhyme or reason why it is neuter. All I can say is that something like 60% of German words are feminine as far as I’ve heard; so I use das quite often unless I know for sure.
 
Only about 20% of German nouns are neuter. About 42% are masculine and 38% feminine.
 
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