How to Tell The Grammatical Gender of Greek Nouns

Let's presume that you're working on Greek or never really learned how to identify the gender of Greek nouns as to whether they're grammatically masculine, feminine or neuter. If you're reading a Greek text, then how can you tell which gender the noun is?

If you have not begun to recognize the endings of nouns yet, maybe you could try this suggestion. First, I will post a well-known favorite (John 1:1):

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.

The first noun is part of a prepositional phrase, so let's skip it for now. However, what is the gender of ὁ λόγος? One way you can tell is by the article that accompanies the noun: if you know the gender of the article, then you can easily discern the noun's gender.

The same principle applies to πρὸς τὸν θεόν, but that might be tricky for beginners since the noun form is accusative and singular and it's part of a prepositional phrase as well.

Regarding John 1:1c, θεὸς is anarthrous in this case, so you can't rely on the article to determine the noun's gender. However, notice that John 1:1 ends with ὁ λόγος, so I hope this tip comes in handy. Moreover, depending on the Greek article works with noun phrases like ἡ σοφία or τὸ πνεῦμα. Try this tip when reading Greek, but in the long term, I would recommend mastering noun endings to some degree along with verbal suffixes.