Be thankful that you're not learning German. It has three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter.

The French words inherit their genders from Latin, a language that all Romance languages (English, French, Spanish, Italian, to name a few) originate from. The basis of Latin in all these languages is due to Rome’s world dominance beginning well over a thousand years ago. But gender in words goes much further back to languages several thousand years older than Latin. Your question about “why would people give these words gender” is a good question that even modern researchers can only speculate on. But if you are really interested in the history of words there is a science dedicated to that called “etymology”. You should look into that!

Hello,there is a difference because it's like you say in English: his name is Jack, and someone answer you :who is she?.and this is wrong. the same for english i think.my school level is very low but I'm sure of that of that.you can check from a professional french langue. your answer take me to think about it, I found your question interesting,so i past this comment.