女儿
daughter
HSK level
- Pinyin
- nǚ'ér
- Part of speech
- noun
- Level
- HSK 1
- Strokes
- 5
- Register
- neutral
- Measure word
- 个
- In episodes
- 2
Stroke order for 女儿
女儿 is written with 5 strokes (女: 3, 儿: 2). The animation replays automatically.
What does 女儿 mean?
女儿 (nǚ'ér) is the standard word for 'daughter' — the female child of one's parents.
The apostrophe in the pinyin (nǚ'ér) is required to show that ér starts a new syllable; without it, 'nüer' could ambiguously read as one syllable. The pair word for son is 儿子 (érzi). Like other Chinese kinship terms, 女儿 is gender-specific: there's no neutral way to say 'kid' that defaults to daughter. If you don't want to specify gender, use 孩子 (háizi, 'child').
女儿 is used in every register — parents talking about their kid, news articles, formal speeches at weddings. Two cultural notes: in older generations, 'having a daughter' (生女儿 / 有女儿) carried different social weight than having a son, though that's faded. And on family forms, 女儿 is the row label next to 儿子.
Character by character
Memory hook: 女 (female) + 儿 (child) = 女儿, daughter. Literally 'female child.'
Hear 女儿 in real episodes
女儿 appears in 2 Fluentide podcast episodes at natural native speed. Each sentence plays at the easiest difficulty it exists in — switch it to hear the same moment at your level, with full pinyin and English throughout.
是蝴蝶妈妈，蝴蝶女儿，还有女儿的女儿。
The butterfly mother, the butterfly daughter, and the daughter's daughter.
No Monarch Butterfly Ever Finishes Its Own Migration — the Trip Takes Four Generations
也有一个儿子，一个女儿。
It also has a son and a daughter.
Christian Bale Spent Twenty Years Building Twelve Houses So Foster Brothers and Sisters Would Stop Being Split UpBeginner
Example sentences
我有一个女儿。
Wǒ yǒu yí ge nǚ'ér.
I have a daughter.
neutral
他的女儿在上学。
Tā de nǚ'ér zài shàngxué.
His daughter is in school.
neutral
我女儿今年五岁。
Wǒ nǚ'ér jīnnián wǔ suì.
My daughter is five this year.
spoken
你女儿叫什么名字？
Nǐ nǚ'ér jiào shénme míngzi?
What's your daughter's name?
spoken
Common phrases with 女儿
Synonyms
闺女 is a warmer, more colloquial 'daughter / girl,' common in northern dialects and informal speech. Parents calling their daughter affectionately may say 闺女. 女儿 is the neutral standard.
千金 is an old, polite/literary way to say 'your daughter' (lit. 'a thousand pieces of gold'), still used in very formal compliments. Daily speech: 女儿.
Don't confuse 女儿 with
孩子 means 'child' regardless of gender. 女儿 specifically means daughter. If gender is unknown or doesn't matter, use 孩子.
女孩 (or 女孩儿) means 'girl' in general — any female child or young woman. 女儿 is specifically YOUR daughter (the relationship word). 她是一个女孩 = 'she's a girl'; 她是我女儿 = 'she's my daughter.'
FAQ
Related words from the same episodes
Acquire it by listening
Meet 女儿 again — in real Chinese, at your level.
You just saw 女儿 in 2 episodes. Fluentide keeps feeding you news episodes at your level, so this word — and thousands like it — resurface in real sentences until they stick. Full pinyin and translation every time. Free to start.