Whom are you?

Did you never hear that the verb "to be" takes no object? Too strict an adage for real world usage of course, but dead on in this case.

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The answer to your question is "not a chance." The verb "to be" indicates identity and the nominative case "Who" is the right one to use.

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Although scyllacat is correct in this case, her argument doesn't hold up for an example such as _it is me_ - not many would now say _it is I_.

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Use "who".

"Whom" smacks of overcorrection (the tendency to overcompensate when a speaker is unsure of a grammatical concept)..

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@semiotek, super heros would

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semiotec has a good point, but the exception falls under the category of descriptive grammar (what people actually use and understand in conversation) rather than prescriptive grammar (the written and academic rules). You are wanting to know the prescriptive rule, which scyllacat gave.

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Prescribed by whom, precisely?

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"Whom are you" is worse than overcorrection. It is simply wrong. In most of its meanings, the verb "to be" does not take an object but a predicate nominative, and therefore nominative rather than objective case.

This is the old rule; the new one seems to be to use the nominative before the verb and objective after it, regardless of the Latin rules. Hence, "It is I" is no longer preferred over "It is me."

In either case, "who is it" wins.

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Few people get this right. I think we'd be much better off consigning the word "whom" to the dustbin of archaic terminology. It will have plenty of company. Where doth thou goest? And, with whom?

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@Anonymous: "Where doth thou goest ?" is completely off key.
It should be, were one to express oneself in such antiquated verbiage,
"Where dost thou go ?"

@semiotek: the "it is I", "It's me" debate is a question of usage and context. The use in French of stressed personal pronoun "moi" in this construction ( "C'est moi" ) may well be at the origin of the "me" in English in this phrase.

I, for one, find nothing wrong with correct grammar. While "who" is often substituted for "whom" , it doesn't cost anything to say or write the correct form.

I remember seeing a t-shirt imprinted with the quote
"It's not who you know,
it's whom you know."

Sums it up nicely for me !

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@rj74210: Or, to hammer home the point, "Whither goest thou?"

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Absolutely ! The "quo vadis" version occurred to me after I'd posted my alternate correction.

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@rj74210
'It should be, were one to express oneself in such antiquated verbiage, ...'
I think one just did, didn't one?

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One did !

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James Thurber answered this very question quite authoritatively! http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~heycock/thurber-who.html

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Are you serious? This is the 21st century. Thurber?

I tell you what--I will remember what he says in case I ever have to talk to Gladstone.

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Never write a sentence that requires you to use the word "whom". It's too archaic, too formal.

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Didn't some newspaper (I think it was in Chicago) once announce the DEATH OF WHOM and stopped using it in the newspaper?

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"Who is it?" is correct, while "It is I whom you seek" is also correct, not "it is I who you seek". Whom always comes before the subject of the sentence ('you' in this case). But nowadays in cases where 'whom' would be correct, 'who' is also accepted.

'Who will we donate money to?'
'It is you whom we will donate money to' OR 'It is you to whom we will donate money.' You know 'we' is the subject because it can be rearranged to 'We will donate money to you'.

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So, does "whom does the new tax proposal really benefit?" sound archaic and stilted to folks, or does it sound and look exactly right?

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@Stavros K. - To me, yes, it sounds stilted. It's very unusual, in BrE a least, to use 'whom' as a direct object. In your example I would simply say 'Who'.

We can usually get round the problem in relative clauses by missing it out altogether

'The people (-) the new tax proposal really benefit are those with families.'

And with prepositions we can usually shift them to the end.

'Who should I give this to'

But there are a few occasions where it's difficult to avoid.

'The delegates, many of whom had come a long way, were feeling pretty tired.'

And there it seems to me to sound less stilted.

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