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There is a lady Xena, and she has two boys. Let their names be Uther & Vlad.

  1. Xena named her sons Uther & Vlad.

  2. Xena named his sons Uther & Vlad.

Out of these 2 sentences which one is correct? And why? In some cases, while reading both look OK.

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  • (2) definitely doesn't look OK to a native speaker, unless Xena for some reason gave names to a man's sons by another woman.
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Aug 14, 2021 at 7:59
  • Or just to her own sons by a specific man, implying that she might have had other sons by different men.
    – Daniel Roseman
    Commented Aug 14, 2021 at 10:26
  • @KateBunting can we use just singular "son" there instead of plural "sons"?
    – Man_From_India
    Commented Aug 14, 2021 at 15:05
  • @Man_From_India the count of children is 2, so it should be plural
    – Rajendran Nadar
    Commented Aug 14, 2021 at 15:27

1 Answer 1

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In English, the choice of pronoun depends on the noun it replaces.

If Xena is female, the pronoun must be her.

[Other languages may differ, having pronouns which are inflected according to the possession rather than the possessor: in French, both "his daughter" and "her daughter" would be "sa fille".]

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