Why death is often a woman in Spanish-speaking cultures but a man in English
The Grim Reaper with his scythe is only one face of death. Where the word for death is feminine, as with Spanish muerte, death tends to be imagined as a woman. Elsewhere death is a judge in robes, a bureaucrat with a red list of names, or a gentle guide who decides nothing at all.
Beliefs split on what a death figure actually does. The Reaper of modern stories arrives to collect a soul and so brings death about. Many traditions instead picture a psychopomp, a kindly escort who loosens the soul from the body and leads it onward without choosing when anyone dies. Male figures dominate, but not everywhere: Slavic Marzanna and Mexico's Santa Muerte are female. Latin American folk speech calls death la Parca, borrowed from one of the Roman Fates, usually shown as a woman with no scythe.
Mexico's reverence for death runs deep. The Aztec underworld Mictlan was ruled by Mictecacihuatl, Lady of the Dead, and her husband Mictlantecuhtli, and the festivals she presided over blended with Spanish customs to become the modern Day of the Dead, whose elegant skeleton Catrina is now an icon. For the Aztecs, skeletal imagery could signify fertility and abundance. In Paraguay and northeast Argentina a male skeleton saint, San La Muerte, is venerated; his resemblance in name to Santa Muerte is pure coincidence.
Asia shows how one figure can travel. The Hindu lord of death, Yama, rides a black buffalo and judges souls using records kept by Chitragupta. Buddhism carried him to China as Yanluo Wang, pictured in a judge's cap on hell money, then to Japan as Enma, Korea as Yeomra and Vietnam as Diem La Vuong. Korea also has Jeoseung Saja, a stern messenger who calls a name three times from a red cloth list, after which the soul must follow. Japan's shinigami, familiar from modern fiction, were essentially absent from traditional myth.
Older and nearer to Europe, the Canaanites of the 13th and 12th centuries BC worshipped Mot, literally Death, a son of El who battles the storm god Baal in texts from Ugarit. In Lithuania, Giltinė, from a verb meaning to sting, was a hag with a long blue nose, said to have been pretty until she was shut in a coffin for seven years; her sister Laima governed life and destiny. Brittany's Ankou drives a creaking cart, and the Irish banshee, literally fairy woman, announces a coming death by keening.
Source: Personifications of death
