`  :::It would sound silly to me if someone said there was a dish called la raclette fondue, since there is no such thing that I'm aware of. Put it to a romand that way and yeah, they might laugh. Put as an etymological link laughs are unlikely. Either way though, sourcing on the origins of French gender is often way thin, I recall hearing about some wastefully expensive Académie francaise study into French word gender and they mostly came up with a big fat blank, no hint of any linguistic ``patterns`` and scant etymology. I think they were hoping for gender rules they could shove at schoolkids or something. Anyway, I agree the sourcing on this hasn't been nearly enough for some of the editors who've looked at this article and unless, by some fluke, something shows up later, I have no worries about it not being in the text.   `