Family members in Chinese: by age and by side

The family members in Chinese are 妈妈 māma (mum), 爸爸 bàba (dad), 哥哥 gēge (older brother), 姐姐 jiějie (older sister), 弟弟 dìdi (younger brother), 妹妹 mèimei (younger sister), 儿子 érzi (son) and 女儿 nǚ'ér (daughter), and then a set of grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins whose word depends on which side of the family they are on. Mandarin Chinese builds two things into its family words that English leaves out: whether a brother or sister is older or younger than you, and whether a relative comes through your father or your mother. So there are at least four words for a grandparent, five for an uncle and eight for a cousin. Below are the words with pinyin, in simplified characters with the traditional form where it differs, the system behind them, the words that are also used to strangers, and which family words Chinese films and television say most.

Updated 5 November 2026 · 14 min read

Family members in Chinese

The counts are from Chinese film and television subtitles in simplified characters; how they were made, and the same words in traditional characters, are further down. A syllable written without a tone mark, like the second ma of māma, is said lightly, with no tone of its own: most of the doubled words are like that. The tones themselves are in Mandarin tones explained.

Older or younger: brothers and sisters

The everyday word for a brother or a sister always says which way the age difference goes. Wikipedia's article on Chinese kinship puts it as a rule of the system: "the relative age of a sibling is indicated by specific terms".

• 哥哥 gēge is an older brother and 弟弟 dìdi a younger one.
• 姐姐 jiějie is an older sister and 妹妹 mèimei a younger one.
• 兄弟 xiōngdì is "brothers", and 姐妹 jiěmèi "sisters".
• 兄弟姐妹 xiōngdì jiěmèi, all four put together, is "brothers and sisters": 你有兄弟姐妹吗？ Nǐ yǒu xiōngdì jiěmèi ma? "Do you have any brothers or sisters?"

With more than one, Chinese numbers them by age. 大哥 dàgē is the eldest brother, and the same counting works for other relatives: Wikipedia gives 大姨 for your mother's eldest sister, 二姨 for the second and 三姨 for the third. And because it is taboo to address a more senior relative by their given name, the article adds, the kinship word is the only possible way to address them.

Several of these words reach beyond the family. Wiktionary records 姐姐 as a way of addressing any woman not much older than you, and 弟弟 any male younger than you. 兄弟 is also "bro", a close friend: Wiktionary's example is 兄弟，我今天请客, "My brother, it's my treat today". 大哥, "eldest brother", is also how you address a close friend of your own age or older, and the word for the boss of a gang.

In Taiwan an older sister may also be written 姊姊, which Wiktionary's Chinese edition lists beside 姐姐 for Taiwan. On the mainland 姊姊 is read zǐzǐ; in Taiwan it is read jiějie, exactly like 姐姐.

Father's side or mother's side: the grandparents

The mother's side carries a prefix, 外 wài, "outside". Wiktionary gives it a sense of its own, "relatives of one's mother, sister or daughter", and it runs through the whole system: your daughter's son is 外孙 wàisūn and her daughter 外孙女 wàisūnnǚ, while your son's children are plain 孙子 sūnzi and 孙女 sūnnǚ. Your sister's son is 外甥 wàisheng, and your brother's son is 侄子 zhízi (traditional 姪子). Wikipedia explains why: the traditional system was "agnatic", with descent through the male line, and 外 is the prefix for the mother's line, "essentially anyone not sharing the same surname" as you.

爷爷 is also a term of address for any elderly man, so in a film, not every 爷爷 is somebody's grandfather.

外婆 or 姥姥?

Mandarin has two everyday words for your mother's mother. Wiktionary's survey of local words records 姥姥 lǎolao in Beijing, Tianjin and Changchun, and 外婆 wàipó in Chengdu, Chongqing, Taiwan and Singapore, often beside other local words; for the grandfather, 姥爷 and 外公 divide the same way. The split became a news story in June 2018, when the Shanghai Educational Publishing House changed every 外婆 in a second-year primary school text to 姥姥, as the BBC's Chinese service reported. Shanghai internet users protested: "Shanghai has no 姥姥, only 外婆!" The publisher said the change was made for teaching characters, because 外 and 婆 had already been taught. Professor Xiang Mengbing of Peking University told the BBC that both words are standard Mandarin, not dialect: 姥姥 is current mainly in Beijing, Hebei and the dialects around them, and 外婆 in many southern dialects, so the difference is one of colour, with 姥姥 sounding of Beijing and 外婆 of the south.

In the subtitles, 外婆 wins: it is said 6.1 times as often as 姥姥 in simplified characters, and 14.7 times as often in traditional ones. 姥姥 has a second life as an exclamation, which Wiktionary glosses "like hell!" or "never!".

Uncles and aunts: which side, and how old

On your father's side, his brothers are divided by age: 伯伯 is older than your father, and 叔叔 younger. The formal words are 伯父 bófù and 叔父 shūfù. In Wiktionary's Mandarin senses, 姑妈 is a father's sister who is married, and 姨妈 a mother's sister, usually a married one. Counting the uncles' wives and the aunts' husbands, that makes five words for an English "uncle" and five for an "aunt".

Two of them are also said to people who are not relatives at all. 叔叔 is how you address, especially as a child, any man around your father's age or a little younger, and 阿姨 any woman around your mother's age; 阿姨 is also how women who work as carers, nurses, cleaners or live-in help are addressed. 伯伯 does the same for a man older than your father, and 伯母 is how you address the mother of a friend. And 姨妈 has a slang meaning: Wiktionary records it as another name for 大姨妈 dàyímā, a menstrual period.

The counts show the effect. 叔叔 is said 7.2 times as often as 舅舅 and 15.2 times as often as 伯伯, and 阿姨 is the most-said aunt. Some of that is the friendly 叔叔 and 阿姨 said to people who are not relatives. Another possible reason is translation: many subtitles are translated from other languages, and English "uncle" does not say whose brother he is, so a translator has to choose.

Cousins: 堂 and 表

Chinese splits first cousins into two kinds:

• 堂 táng cousins are the children of your father's brothers. Wiktionary defines 堂 as "of the same paternal grandfather or great-grandfather", and the word is also a hall, as in 祠堂, an ancestral hall. In the traditional system they share your surname.
• 表 biǎo cousins are all the others: the children of your father's sisters, and of your mother's brothers and sisters.

Each then takes the sibling word for a cousin older or younger than you, which gives eight:

The more formal 堂兄 tángxiōng and 表兄 biǎoxiōng are also used for an older male cousin. The 表 words are said 5.1 times as often as the 堂 words in simplified subtitles, and 3.5 times as often in traditional ones. That is not surprising once you count the uncles and aunts behind them: 表 covers the children of three kinds of uncle and aunt, 堂 the children of one. The most-said cousin of all is the older male 表 cousin, 表哥 or 表兄, at 14.5 per million.

Formal and informal: 母亲 or 妈妈, 妻子 or 老婆

母亲 mǔqīn and 父亲 fùqīn, which Wiktionary marks as formal, are "mother" and "father". 妈妈 and 爸爸, marked informal, are mum and dad, and what you call them to their face: Wikipedia lists them as the terms of address. More familiar still are 老妈 lǎomā and 老爸 lǎobà, "my old mum" and "dad", which Wiktionary marks as endearing.

Husband and wife have three layers:

• 丈夫 zhàngfu and 妻子 qīzi are the plain words.
• 老公 lǎogōng and 老婆 lǎopo are colloquial: 我老婆 is "my wife".
• 先生 xiānsheng and 太太 tàitai are also husband and wife, as well as "Mr" and "Mrs": 王先生 is Mr Wang. 爱人 (愛人) àirén is a mainland word for a husband or wife, and also a sweetheart, and 媳妇 (媳婦) xífu is a daughter-in-law and, in Mandarin, also a wife.

Online, Wiktionary notes, 老婆 has also become a fan's word for a favourite female character, a "waifu", and 老公 for a male one. 老婆, in a separate sense, can also mean an old woman, and 老公 was once a word for a eunuch.

The counts split by kind of relative. For parents, the informal words win: 妈妈 is said 3.1 times as often as 母亲, and 爸爸 1.7 times as often as 父亲. For spouses it is the reverse: 妻子 is said more often than 老婆, and 丈夫 2.8 times as often as 老公. In simplified subtitles 老爸 is said about three times as often as 老妈. 先生 cannot be read for husbands at all: it is said 1,352 times per million words, and a word count cannot tell how many of those are husbands rather than "sir" or "Mr".

In-laws

The words for parents-in-law depend on whose parents they are. A wife's father-in-law is 公公 gōnggong and her mother-in-law 婆婆 pópo; a husband's are 岳父 yuèfù and 岳母 yuèmǔ. 公公 was also, historically, how eunuchs were addressed, and 婆婆, a mother-in-law in Mandarin, is a maternal grandmother in Cantonese.

Siblings-in-law follow age too: an older brother's wife is 嫂子 sǎozi, a younger brother's wife 弟媳 dìxí, an older sister's husband 姐夫 jiěfu, and a younger sister's husband 妹夫 mèifu. 嫂子 is also a friendly word for a friend's wife.

Which family words do Chinese films say most?

We counted each family word in the simplified (zh_cn) and the traditional (zh_tw) lists of Chinese film and television subtitles, 85,487,865 and 33,409,013 words long. Each list contains some subtitles in the other script, so both spellings are counted in each. The 表 and 堂 rows add up their four cousin words.

What the counts show:

• 孩子 is first. "Child" is said more than any parent, though it covers any child, not only a son or daughter.
• Mum and dad change places between the scripts. In simplified subtitles 妈妈 is just ahead of 爸爸; in traditional ones 爸爸 is ahead.
• 哥哥 is the most-said brother or sister in both scripts, and 弟弟 the least.
• The father's side is said more. 爷爷 and 奶奶 together are said 4.6 times as often as 外公, 外婆, 姥姥 and 姥爷 together, though part of 爷爷 is old men in general. On both sides, the grandmother is said more often than the grandfather.
• 姐姐 is the usual spelling even in traditional subtitles, where it is said 10.4 times as often as 姊姊. Traditional characters are used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, but the subtitle files do not say where they were made, so this compares two scripts, not two places.

The lists were cut into words by a program before counting, so only whole words count. 我妈 and 我爸, "my mum" and "my dad", were kept as words of their own and are not in the 妈妈 and 爸爸 rows, and nor are the short 妈 and 爸 on their own; adding them would only widen the lead of the informal words. In the traditional list, 婶婶 (嬸嬸) was cut in two, so its traditional figure is left out.

Learn them in a sentence

Family words are one of the places where Chinese drops the possessive 的: the Chinese Grammar Wiki notes that with a close personal relationship it is more natural to say 我妈妈 than 我的妈妈.

• 我有一个哥哥和两个妹妹。 — Wǒ yǒu yī ge gēge hé liǎng ge mèimei. — I have an older brother and two younger sisters.
• 你有兄弟姐妹吗？ — Nǐ yǒu xiōngdì jiěmèi ma? — Do you have any brothers or sisters?
• 我妈妈是老师。 — Wǒ māma shì lǎoshī. — My mum is a teacher.
• 她外婆住在上海。 — Tā wàipó zhù zài Shànghǎi. — Her grandmother (her mother's mother) lives in Shanghai.
• 这是我老公。 — Zhè shì wǒ lǎogōng. — This is my husband.

The family words have a lesson of their own in the free Mandarin course, Verbavia (our own course), with pinyin, characters and a recording of each, including why 我妈妈 drops its 的. 孩子, 爸爸, 妈妈, 儿子 and 女儿 are all on the course's list of the 1,000 most common Mandarin words, and so are 哥哥, 姐姐, 弟弟, 妹妹 and 奶奶. To say how many brothers and sisters you have you need Chinese numbers 1 to 100. Two more beginner sets, both counted in subtitles: greetings in Chinese, from 你好 to 再见, and colors in Chinese.

The same family words, counted the same way, in European languages: Spanish, French, German, Italian and Portuguese.

Sources

• Wiktionary (English): 媽媽, 母親, 爸爸, 父親, 老爸, 老媽, 哥哥, 姐姐, 姊姊, 弟弟, 妹妹, 兄弟, 姐妹, 兄弟姐妹, 大哥, 爺爺, 奶奶, 祖父, 祖母, 外公, 外婆 (these two with their tables of local words for a maternal grandparent), 姥姥, 姥爺, 外, 外孫, 外孫女, 外甥, 姪子, 孫子, 孫女, 伯伯, 伯父, 伯母, 叔叔, 嬸嬸, 姑姑, 姑媽, 姑父, 舅舅, 舅媽, 阿姨, 姨媽, 姨父, 堂, 表, 堂哥, 表哥, 老公, 老婆, 丈夫, 妻子, 先生, 太太, 愛人, 媳婦, 公公, 婆婆, 岳父, 岳母, 嫂子, 弟媳, 姐夫 and 妹夫, for the meanings, the register labels and the pinyin.
• Wiktionary (Chinese): 姊姊 and 叔叔, for the mainland and Taiwan readings.
• Wikipedia: Chinese kinship, on relative age, the paternal and maternal lines, the prefixes 堂, 表 and 外, numbering relatives (大姨, 二姨) and addressing a senior relative by the kinship term.
• BBC News 中文, 出版社改教材引發「外婆」與「姥姥」的南北之爭 ("A publisher's textbook change sets off a north-south dispute over 外婆 and 姥姥"), June 2018, with the comments of Xiang Mengbing of Peking University.
• Chinese Grammar Wiki: Expressing close possession without "de".
• The counts are from OpenSubtitles 2018 (Lison, P. & Tiedemann, J., 2016, aclanthology.org) through Hermit Dave's FrequencyWords lists, zh_cn and zh_tw, content licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, github.com. They are computed by scripts/frequency_thousand.py and printed from its output rather than typed.