CALGARY -- Fireman became firefighter. Postman became mail carrier. Chairman became chair.
Language has evolved to reflect women filling what were once traditional male roles in society. Sport lags curiously behind that curve.
Baseball still has "basemen", hockey includes "defencemen," bobsled features "brakemen" and cricket has "batsmen."
But Canadian women competing in hockey and bobsled at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics aren't agitating for gender neutral language in their respective sports.
In fact, they were surprised to be asked about it. The idea of calling themselves "defencewoman" or "brakeperson" actually made them cringe a little.
"I don't think I would ever, ever think we should be called defencewoman," hockey player Laura Fortino said.
At this point in women's sport history, what they are called in their sport ranks below access and financial parity on their list of concerns.
Bobsled pilot Kaillie Humphries, who has raced head-to-head against men, is more preoccupied with getting the female equivalent of four-man bobsled into the Olympic Games than what it will be called when it happens.
"As long as women have the same opportunities, that's to me the biggest thing," Humphries said.
"The same opportunities to grow, to learn, to be successful and as long as everything is equitable within the sport, that's good for me. I'm OK if the language doesn't change for me personally.
"I don't think many of the women in bobsleigh are too hung up on the lingo. We have too much going on in this sport to worry about a name. A brakeman is a brakeman."
Her teammate Melissa Lotholz is fine with "brakeman" because she doesn't assign gender to it.
"I'm a hu-man. I'm not a hu-woman," Lotholz argued. "I'm a brakeman. That's my position. I think of it more in terms of it's humanity, not huwomanity."
Resistance to altering a position's name on a sports team to make it either gender reflective or gender neutral is less about sexism and more about what easily rolls off the tongue, according to University of Calgary linguistics assistant professor Dennis Storoshenko.
"There is just a linguistic reason why defencewoman or defenceperson would be clunky," he explained. "You wind up with that extra syllable on the end, which messes with the stress pattern of the word.
"You would imagine if it's going to change, it would probably change towards the direction of somehow putting more emphasis on the role of the person. I could imagine in the bobsleigh context, I wouldn't be surprised if eventually we just start calling all those people brakes.
"It's a little bit dehumanizing, but it's way better than any other option."
Hockey player Jocelyne Larocque doesn't object to being called a defender, which is slipping into women's hockey jargon.
"I would not be opposed to changing it to defender that's for sure," Larocque said.
Gender neutral language tends to happen in professions and sports where men and women work and play alongside each other, Storoshenko said.
It happened in the firefighting profession, he pointed out, and because mixed curling has a long history, the position names of skip, vice, second and lead aren't gender specific.
"Even though we have men's hockey and women's hockey, there's never going to be any mixing," he said.
"I would imagine if you had a co-ed team, you might find there would be a little bit more pressure to somehow make the change."
The topic is on Australia's radar. One of the recommendations to emerge from a November roundtable conference in Melbourne was to use gender-neutral language in sport.
Australia's Office of Prevention and Women's Equality had commissioned a pair of universities to research ways to promote gender equality and reduce violence against women.
