In Ancient Africa, Ancient Persia, Asian and Pacific cultures, and in some European countries, female monarchs have been given the title "king" or its equivalent, such as "pharaoh", when gender is irrelevant to the office, or else have used the masculine form of the word in languages that have grammatical gender as a way to classify nouns. The Byzantine Empress Irene sometimes titled herself "basileus" (βασιλεύς), 'emperor', rather than "basilissa" (βασίλισσα), 'empress' and Jadwiga of Poland was crowned as "Rex Poloniae", "King of Poland".