Is distilled water pronouns?
Executive summary
No — distilled water is not a person and therefore does not have personal pronouns in the sense that people use them; pronouns are words used to refer to people and their gender identities, and while languages sometimes assign grammatical gender to nouns like “water,” that is a separate grammatical category and not the same as personal pronouns or gender identity [1] [2] [3].
1. What “pronouns” normally mean: words people use for people
In contemporary English usage discussed by advocacy and media sources, pronouns are the words people use to refer to other people instead of names (for example she/her, he/him, they/them), and they play a role in acknowledging someone’s gender identity and social recognition rather than labeling objects or substances [1] [2].
2. Grammatical gender vs. personal pronouns: water can be “gendered” as a noun in some languages, but that’s not the same thing
Some languages assign grammatical gender to inanimate nouns — Spanish speakers refer to agua with feminine agreement even when the article surface-form may vary — but this is a morphological feature of the language and does not imply that the thing has a personal gender or personal pronouns in the social sense used for people [3].
3. Neopronouns and playful or symbolic pronoun projects do not make distilled water a person
Online communities have created neopronoun sets and playful themed pronouns (including “water”-themed neopronouns) as identity or creative expressions, but these are linguistic inventions people can adopt for themselves; their existence shows people can choose or invent pronouns, not that non-sentient items like distilled water literally possess pronouns by virtue of being water [4] [5].
4. Branding, satire, and “pronoun water” show cultural commentary, not ontological change
Media coverage of novelty products or stunts — for example articles and commentary about “pronoun water” bottles marketed (and mocked) as ally signaling — demonstrates cultural debates about how pronouns are used and commodified, but this reporting describes social signaling and satire rather than any claim that bottled or distilled water has pronouns in the human-identity sense [6].
5. Why the distinction matters: respect, clarity, and linguistic categories
Advocates and resources stress that pronouns matter because they acknowledge people’s identities and create inclusive social environments; conflating grammatical gender, novelty pronoun sets, or marketing stunts with actual personal pronouns for non‑sentient things risks confusion and can trivialize the social function that personal pronouns serve [1] [2].
6. Limits of this report and remaining ambiguities
The sources provided explain what pronouns are for people, show examples of water-themed neopronouns and social commentary about “pronoun water,” and explain grammatical gender for words like agua, but none of the provided sources claim that distilled water itself has personal pronouns as a matter of ontology; therefore the reporting cannot identify any authoritative source that treats distilled water as a pronoun-holder in the social or identity sense [6] [4] [3] [1].