Yeah, I don't feel like there's any strong rule on these things apart from "what sounds good" unless the male ending exists like -ien
I've heard at various times in my life the various feminine endings applied to same profession - people playing around with what sounds good or a generational thing. -esse -ice -enne -euse
There's also the debate in gendered languages over whether one should never use feminine endings on professions, and keep them generic, or always use them for all professions for consistency, avoiding suggesting certain professions are male vs female, while ensuring women are visible in professions where they used to be rarer.
> There's also the debate in gendered languages over whether one should never use feminine endings on professions, and keep them generic, or always use them for all professions for consistency [...]
This is a somewhat different kind of thing. In English, there are plenty of professions with a gendered suffix rather like this. Waiter / waitress; actor / actress; steward / stewardess.
In general, the -ess cannot be used for a word that doesn't already exist; the feminist prescription for a female doctor is "lady doctor", not "doctress". You might also note that the masculine versions of those three examples have three different "suffixes".
But the agentive suffix is always -er, whether the agent is male or female. Professions are conceptually different, and better modeled as opaque words than as stem+suffix combinations.
> the feminist prescription for a female doctor is "lady doctor", not "doctress"
Being male I hesitate to speak for feminists, but I’m fairly sure at least 2nd wave ones would prefer just “doctor” and would frown on “lady” as an unnecessary qualifier.
I've heard at various times in my life the various feminine endings applied to same profession - people playing around with what sounds good or a generational thing. -esse -ice -enne -euse
There's also the debate in gendered languages over whether one should never use feminine endings on professions, and keep them generic, or always use them for all professions for consistency, avoiding suggesting certain professions are male vs female, while ensuring women are visible in professions where they used to be rarer.