I acknowledge that you fulfilled my request but personally remain unconvinced using those examples. Tom is generally a nickname for Thomas and borrows pronunciation from that.

However I did remember the words kin and kind but there's also tin and tint. So I'm just going to declare English overall as highly inconsistent and silly, will still pronounce gif with a hard g, but recognize that you have a different point of view. 🙂

[–] Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

Tom is a name for a male animal.

“Bot” and “both” may be more your style. Or, to stick with g, “gin” has a soft g while “gink” has a hard g.