English is full of words to describe people’s occupations. Some of these are gender neutral, such as writer, tailor, Senator and construction worker. Others are not. Of late, there have been attempts to change some of these.

Actor and actress used to indicate different genders. Now only the word "actor" is used. O.K. fair enough.

Postman and policeman now have additional postwoman and policewoman. It’s equitable, but creates new (and longer) words and are not gender neutral.

Spokesman and chairman have become gender neutral by coining spokesperson and chairperson, creating rather ugly words.

We could adapt a foreign affix to take care of this, such as the Arabic mul- or the Hindi –walla. However, most English speakers are unfamiliar with these (though in India one does say shopwalla, postwalla, etc.). Besides, -walla (and I imagine mul-) are themselves gender based (a woman who runs a shop is a shopwalli).

I suggest that we adopt the gender neutral suffix –mun. Firemun, policemun, chairmun, spokesmun, postmun, hangmun, congressmun. It’s easy to learn, easy to say and does the job. The only word I can think of that would not benefit from this would be adding the suffix to seam in order to eliminate seamstress. But, a seamstress becomes a tailor (why are men tailors and women seamstresses anyway?).

We also have ball boy, call girl and bus boy. Yes, we now have ball girls and bus girls (there have been call boys for a long time). But, we could do the same thing with the suffix –by: ballby, busby, callby.