Male Sun, Female Moon

The sun in his splendor, and the moon in her plenitude.

In many cultures around the world, the sun has been associated with masculinity and the moon with femininity. The sun can be considered fierce, harsh, and blazing, traits usually seen as masculine, while the moon can be considered delicate, gentle, and beautiful, traits usually seen as feminine. Additionally, the moon goes through monthly cycles, while the sun rises every morning. Many ancient religions that worshipped the sun and moon personified them as gods and associated those traits with them.

Perhaps, because of that, pairing a male character with a sun motif and a female character with a moon motif continues to be a common trope. A male character associated with the sun may be a fierce, strong yet warm-hearted fighter while a female character associated with the moon may be a beautiful Proper Lady with an air of mysteriousness and an aloof demeanour. Since the sun is a fiery ball of energy and the moon controls the tides, leading to association with fire and water, characters of this sort may also have fire and water (or fire and ice) powers to set them apart from each other. They may also have a contrasting color scheme where the male character wears warm colors and the female character wears cool colors, such as red and blue, orange and blue, black and white, or yellow and purple.

This is not universal - in fact, throughout human culture as a whole, there are more examples of female suns and male moons than the other way around. The sun can be considered light-giving, warm, and nurturing, traits seen as feminine, where the moon can be seen as cold and distant, traits often seen as masculine. There are also several mythologies that did not assign a male/female gender dynamic to the sun and moon at all. However, some of the cultures which became most dominant (such as Classical Mythology) followed the male sun / female moon pattern, which leads to them being strongly represented in Western media, which often looks to those sources for inspiration.

Sub-trope of Night and Day Duo. Related to Solar and Lunar, Cosmic Motifs, Light/Darkness Juxtaposition, Fire/Water Juxtaposition, Fire/Ice Duo, Fire Is Masculine, and Water Is Womanly. Compare The Face of the Sun and The Man in the Moon.

List all inversions under Night and Day Duo.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Pokémon
  • Tate and Liza are twins and the Gym Leaders of Mossdeep City, respectively battling with Solrock and Lunatone.
  • The Alola arc of Pokémon Adventures (which corresponds to the Pokémon Sun and Moon game) names the male protagonist "Sun", and the female protagonist "Moon".
• Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V: Apollo and Diana, two Fusion Dimension duelists who respectively guard the towers holding Ruri and Rin. Apollo's deck and attire is based on the sun, while Diana's is based on the moon. Despite their Smug Snake attitudes, Both of them are effortlessly curb-stomped by Yugo and Kaito in one turn.

Comic Books

• In From Hell, the occult beliefs of the Freemasons include a reverence for the masculine power of the sun, which they believe is the origin of civilization and rationality, and conversely, a fear of the feminine power of the moon, which believe represents chaos and disorder. They incorporate solar and lunar symbolism into all their architecture and iconography to represent this conflict.
• The Sacrificers: King Rokos and Queen Luna are literally the sun and the moon of the world of Harlos, respectively.

Film

• The Phantom of the Opera (2004): A brief shot during the "Masquerade" musical sequence shows a man dressed in a white and gold sun costume and a woman in a black and silver moon costume.

Gamebooks

• Lone Wolf: Ishir is a female Moon goddess and Kai is a male Sun god.

Literature

• Dreamblood Duology: In the Creation Myth, the Sun was an Abhorrent Admirer to the sisters Waking Moon and Dreaming Moon until the latter laid down the law, took him in hand, and married him.
• Masquerade: The Sun and Moon here are portrayed as male and female respectively. The book kicks off with the Moon falling in love with the handsome Sun but being unable to approach him due to their natures in the sky. So she sends Jack Hare off with a gift to declare her intentions.
• The Silmarillion: Inverted. After the Two Trees of Valinor are destroyed by Melkor and Ungoliant, their last remnants are placed in vessels which become the sun and moon. Two Maiar (essentially minor angels) are chosen to guide their paths through the sky; the female Arien guides the sun, while the male Tilion guides the moon. (This is also referenced lightheartedly in The Lord of the Rings, where the poem about The Man in the Moon has a female Sun come out in the final stanza.)
• A Song of Ice and Fire: In the Dothraki religion, the moon is a goddess and the wife of the sun. Daenerys calls her husband Khal Drogo "my sun and stars," while he refers to her as "moon of my life."
• Sun, Moon, and Talia: Many English translations of the fairy tale have depicted the twins Sun as male and Moon as female.

Live-Action TV

• Bear in the Big Blue House: The show's characters include a female moon named Luna and a male sun named Ray.
• Power Rangers Mystic Force: The Sixth Ranger Daggeron is male and uses the Power of the Sun. The Rangers' female ally Claire draws her power from the moon.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation. Inverted in "Masks" which has Masaka, an Evil Matriarch sun goddess, and her male rival Korgano, represented by the moon. The two are involved in a constant yet ritualistic stuggle for power.

Music

• The album art for Three of a Perfect Pair by King Crimson provides an abstract take on the concept, in which the sun and moon are respectively represented as a masculine phallus and a feminine crescent, the former preparing to penetrate the latter.

Myths & Religion

• Wikipedia has a page section for discussing the genders of lunar and solar deities, which notes that female suns are more common than male suns overall. Sun goddesses and moon gods, while many exist, should not be listed here.
• As noted above, Aboriginal sun deities are mostly feminine and moon deities mostly masculine. A notable exception can be seen with the indigenous people of Tasmania, where the sun (Parnuen) and the Moon (Vena) are male and female respectively, being a husband and wife pair that created the world. Why this is nobody knows.
• Chinese Mythology: In the story of Houyi and Chang'e, the husband is the god of archery whose most prominent feat is shooting down 9 of the 10 suns that were scorching the Earth, while his wife is the lunar deity who was banished to the moon after taking the whole of the immortality potion (or pills, depending on the version) that was supposed to be shared between the couple.
• Classical Mythology:
  • Helios is the Titan and personification of the Sun, while his sister Selene is the Titaness and personification of the Moon.
  • Over time, Apollo and Artemis/Diana, the god of light and the goddess of the hunt, became conflated with Helios and Selene, respectively. Therefore, Apollo became a sun god and Diana became a moon goddess.
• In Japanese Mythology the trope is inverted, as the brother and sisters, Amaterasu, a sun kami, and Tsukuyomi a moon kami.
• In Philippine Mythology, Apolaki is the god of the Sun and Mayari is the goddess of the Moon. The "Just So" Story of the Moon's phases is that Apolaki and Mayari, who are siblings in most versions, had a fight on who could rule the heavens and he hit her leaving her blind with one eye, and made peace by taking turns with him ruling the day, and her ruling the night.
• Taoism: Yin and yang are used to represent the concept of duality and can be interpreted as meaning "bright and black" or "positive and negative"; many things considered to be a dichotomy or opposing have been grafted onto this. Broadly, yang energy is active and is associated with the masculine, fire, the sun, the sky, and daytime and yin energy is passive, associated with the feminine, water, earth, the moon, and nighttime.
• In Roman Catholicism, Jesus is sometimes associated with the sun and the Virgin Mary with the moon. This is meant to symbolize how moonlight is a reflection of sunlight, and the Mary is an intercessor for Jesus. However, the woman in Revelation is often interpreted as the Virgin Mary, and she is symbolized with both the sun and the moon, as well as a crown of stars. Similarly, in reference to Revelations, one Catholic prayer highlights Mary as being "fair as the moon [and] bright as the sun."

Tabletop Games

• Forgotten Realms plays it straight at least for human ones during this edition with Amaunator (male) as solar deity and Selûne (female) as a lunar one. However during 3rd Edition and earlier on there was no solar deity as such, at least human, in the setting as Amaunator was presumed to be dead, except for the people of the Anauroch desert who worshipped At'ar the Merciless, a female Sun deity.

Toys

• Digimon: While Digimon technically don't have genders, the Olympus XIII members Apollomon and Dianamon follow this trope; Apollomon is a male-looking warrior who wields The Power of the Sun, while Dianamon looks female, and her armor has a moon-based theme.
• Tamagotchi: The Tamagotchi Connection Version 5 introduced Sunnytchi, a Tamagotchi shaped like the sun, and Mikazukitchi, a Tamagotchi with a crescent moon head. While both characters could originally be either gender, later toys make Sunnytchi strictly male and Mikazukitchi strictly female.

Video Games

• Bayonetta: The all-male Lumen Sages and the all-female Umbra Witches had the sun and the moon as their respective symbols.
• Dark Souls: Gwyn, the Lord of Sunlight, certainly believed this, which is why he raised his son Gwyndolin to be female when he was born with powers of the moon
• In Final Fantasy X, Tidus unlocks his Celestial Weapon with the Sun Crest and Yuna unlocks hers with the Moon Crest.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV, the Xaela of the Azim Steppe worship the Dawn Father Azim and the Dusk Mother Nhaama, the god of the sun and moon respectively. According to legend, Azim and Nhaama created the Au Ra as their soldiers to wage war over who would rule the new world until the Au Ra learned to set aside their differences and love each other. Similarly, Magnai, the current leader of the Oronir clan, believes himself the mortal incarnation of Azim. Meanwhile, Sadu, the leader of the Dotharl clan who favors Nhaama, is a woman in her present incarnation.
• In Horizon Zero Dawn, the Carja people worship the sun as the God of Good- specifically, of life, law, and male dominance- and therefore assume that the matriarchal Nora tribe must worship (the Carja interpretation of) the moon, a cold, death-bringing goddess. This is partly because they live in a desert, where the temperature drops precipitously at night and the darkness makes it harder to see any machines creeping up on you. Sunlight may be hot, but at least it has benefits alongside its dangers.
  Carja priest: The sun is masculine. Obviously.
• In Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, Ephraim, Prince of Renais, has the nation's treasure known as the Solar Brace, while his sister Eirika has its counterpart the Lunar Brace.
• In La-Mulana, the Temple of the Sun is depicted symbolically as male, while its mirror-area, Temple of Moonlight, is female. This symbolism comes to a head in one of the puzzles, where a small woman statue is impregnated in the former, then carried to the latter.
• In The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, one of the most well-known sidequests involves a couple who made a Childhood Marriage Promise to exchange masks on the day of the Carnival of Time, which was also to be their wedding day. Kafei, the groom, modeled his mask after the sun, while Anju, the bride, modeled hers after the moon. When the two masks are brought together, they turn into the Couple's Mask, which they give to Link as thanks for helping reunite them.
• Mario Party 6: Twila (female moon) and Brighton (male sun) take the forms of wizard-like creatures with the moon and sun as their heads. They get turned into She's a Man in Japan in the German version of the game, because, as mentioned below, the German word for sun is feminine and the one for moon masculine, which means Brighton and Twila swap genders as well.
• Monster Hunter: Silver Rathalos is known in the in-universe monster lore as "the silver sun", and like the other Rathalos species (red and azure) it's male. Gold Rathian, meanwhile, is given the tile of "the golden moon", and like the other Rathian species (brownish green and pink) it's female. Both monsters are classified as Rare Species (and were historically the first of this class to be discovered, long before the likes of Lucent Nargacuga and Abyssal Lagiacrus), and there are quests where you have to hunt both of them at once.
• Octopath Traveler II: Akalā is a male lajackal associated with the sun and Mahina is a female owl associated with the moon.
• Pokémon Sun and Moon:
  • Solgaleo and Lunala, associated respectively with the sun and moon, are said by the Pokédex to be the male and female evolutions of Cosmog. However, all three are genderless in-game.
  • The male and female player are named Elio and Selene; Elio's name is taken from Helios, the Greek god of the sun, while Selene's is taken from Selene, the Greek goddess of the moon.
• In Sea of Stars, the Solar magic wielder Zale is a boy, while his partner, the Lunar magic wielder Valere, is a girl.
• Tales Series: In the Aselia setting, which includes Tales of Phantasia, Tales of Symphonia, and their related spinoffs, Aska and Luna have this dynamic. Both are Great Spirits of Light and are technically genderless, but Aska represents the sun's light and is traditionally perceived as masculine, while Luna represents the moon's light and takes the form of a young woman.
• Warframe
  • Equinox is a warframe with two forms she can switch between, a feminine one representing night and a masculine one representing day.
  • The passage of time on Cambion Drift, Deimos is represented by two gigantic wyrms fighting each other: Fass, who is described with masculine pronouns and shines bright orange; and Vome, who is described with feminine pronouns and shines bright blue.
• World of Warcraft:
  • Night elves worship the moon goddess Elune and have a matriarchal society. Meanwhile, blood elves have a strong association with the sun (although their actual religion is very rarely discussed) and are largely patriarchal. Enforcing the contrast, night elves only have female guards in their cities while blood elves only have male, unlike every other race which has a mix.
  • The Tauren also worship Elune under the name Mu'sha, but their mythology also honours her twin brother An'she, the sun. Tauren priests and paladins ('Sunwalkers') are said to draw their power from An'she, though it's left ambiguous if he's an actual entity or just how the Tauren view the Holy Light.

Visual Novels

• Super Danganronpa Another 2: The female Sora represents the "Moon of Hope", while the male Mikado represents the "Sun of Despair".

Webcomics

• Our Little Adventure: The sun and moon are brother and sister Physical Gods, respectively, who manifest in the sky above Manjulias. They grant Fire and Water magic to their respective followers but aren't otherwise particularly masculine or feminine in themselves or their religious organizations.

Web Videos

• Feeding the Trolls: CuteFuzzyWeasel expresses confusion at this idea in his episode on Spirit Science, believing that it makes more sense the other way around since the sun brings life while the moon is cold and dead.

Western Animation

• The Amazing World of Gumball: In earlier seasons, the moon was male just for some throw-away jokes. As the series gained its identity and moved past the Early-Installment Weirdness, the moon was given a female identity who showed up across various episodes, most prominently in "The Love". It would revert back to male for one episode, "The Night", where the Moon narrated about the dreams of the citizens of Elmore (and annoyed them in the process for keeping them awake.)
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Katara is a girly-girl waterbender and her power becomes stronger under a full moon. At the end of Book 1, she faces off against Zuko after he infiltrates the Northern Water Tribe. He is a masculine firebender who draws strength from the sun. Katara initially has the upper hand, but Zuko is able to overpower her once the sun starts rising.
  • The Sequel Series The Legend of Korra turns this on this head by having the light spirit Raava as female and the dark spirit Vaatu as male. While the latter is not outright associated with the moon, the former is implicitly associated with the sun as Korra in the Spirit World can make the sun brighter.
• Inverted in Mr Moon; the title protagonist, Mr Moon, is male, while his counterpart Sunny is female. The stars and constellations' genders vary.
• Ready Jet Go!: Sunspot (a masculine alien pet) is themed after the sun and his counterpart Moonbeam (a feminine alien pet) is themed after the moon.
• Winx Club: This applies to Stella's parents. Her father King Radius has a sun motif while her mother Queen Luna has a moon motif.

Real Life

• In the Chinese philosophical concepts of yin and yang, yin characterizes the feminine/negative principle and is associated with the moon, while yang characterizes the masculine/positive principle and is associated with the sun.
• In Spanish, the sun (el sol) is a masculine noun, while the moon (la luna) is a feminine noun. Some other romance languages also follow this trope; in French, the sun and moon are le soleil and la lune; in Latin, they are sol/solis and luna/lunae; in Portuguese, they are o sol and a lua. On the contrary, in Nordic mythology, the sun (Sol) is female, while the moon (Mani) is male, and this is also present in linguistics, like German Sonne (feminine) and Mond (masculine).
• Averted in the Hebrew language, where despite everything being either male or female, the sun has one name (female), and the moon has two names (one male, one female).
• Cleopatra VII had twins by Marc Antony who were named Alexander Helios (after the sun) and Cleopatra Selene (after the moon).
• In the Emerald Tablet, the cryptic founding document of Alchemy, reads in one line (the actual meaning which is disputed):
  And as all things have been and arose from one by the mediation of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation.
  The Sun is its father, the moon its mother,
  the wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth is its nurse.
• In heraldry, the Sun and Moon are given male and female attribution, most commonly "Sun in his splendor" (golden disc with a face and wavy rays from the body) and "Moon in her plenitude" (silver disc with face).

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