What does it mean if a person has a niece? How is a niece related to another person? This article will teach you about the meaning of niece and more!

How can the word niece be used to describe a person’s relationship with another family member? What does it mean if you are someone’s niece, and what does it mean if you have a niece? This article will cover every topic you need to know about the word niece, including translations and example sentences.

What Does the Word Niece Mean?

According to Collins English Dictionary, the noun niece refers to the daughter of a person’s brother or sister. The word niece is one syllable, and its pronunciation is niːs. The plural form of the word niece is fairly simple: just add an s to the end to form the word nieces.

The masculine version of the word niece is nephew. This word refers to the son of a person’s brother or sister. If someone has both nieces and nephews, this means that their brother, sister, or combination of the two have had children who are both male and female.

There is no gender-neutral term for the terms niece and nephew. This can be complicated if a person’s sibling has a child who is nonbinary or if someone is looking for a term to refer to all of their brother and sister’s children without having to say “nieces and nephews.” Some people have offered up the word nibling, similar to the gender-neutral word sibling. What do you think about this word?

Other Ways to Describe Relatives

There are many other ways to refer to your relatives. If you refer to a person who has the same parents as someone else and is male, this person is called their brother. If you refer to a person who has the same parents as someone and is female, she is called that person’s sister. The gender-neutral term for a person with the same parents as another person is sibling.

The parent of someone’s parent is called their grandparent, and the gendered terms for these are grandmother and grandfather. The child of someone’s child is called a person’s grandchild, granddaughter, or grandson. A parent’s sister is called a person’s aunt, and a parent’s brother is called the person’s uncle. The children of a person’s aunts and uncles are called a person’s cousins.

Things get more confusing when you factor in the generational divide. For example, the aunt or uncle of a parent would be a person’s great aunt or great uncle. The children of a person’s parent’s cousins are called a person’s second cousins, and a person’s second cousin’s parents are called a person’s first cousins once removed.

How exactly a person is related to someone else might be difficult to describe. When it comes down to it, you know they’re family — and that is all that matters.

What Are Examples of Niece?

Take a look at these example sentences containing niece!

The woman took her little niece to the carnival.

Due to their mother having children twenty years apart, the girl’s niece was older than her.

I love spending time with my nieces.

What Is the Origin of the Word Niece?

According to Dictionary, the word niece has been used since the 13th century as the Middle English nece. This comes from Old French and the Vulgar Latin neptia, which stems from the Latin neptis.

Originally, the word niece was represented as the Middle English nifte and Old English nift. These relate to the Old Frisian and Old High German nift and the Old Norse nipt, German nichte, and Dutch nicht. These come from Indo-European roots.

What Are Translations of Niece?

There are many ways that people in other languages can refer to their niece. Have you heard any of these words used around town?

Finnish: veljentytär
Swedish: niece
French: nièce
Danish: niece
Latvian: brāļameita
Welsh: nith
Greek: ανηψιά
Norwegian: niese
Swahili: mjomba
Bulgarian: племенница
Tamil: நாட்டு
Hebrew: אחייד
Slovenian: nečakinja
Vietnamese: cháu gái
Catalan: neboda
Chinese (PRC): 侄女
Icelandic: frænkur
Amharic: ናይስ
Spanish: sobrina
Croatian: nećakinja
Marathi: भगिनी
Hindi: भांजी
German: Nichte
Gujarati: ભત્રીજી
Ukrainian: племінниця
Czech: neteř
Thai: หลานสาว
Bengali: ভাতিজা.
Turkish: yeğen
Basque: iloba
Dutch: nicht
Italian: nipote
Polish: siostrzenica
Kannada: ಸೋದರ ಸೊಸೆ
Arabic: ابنة الاخ
Lithuanian: dukterė
Chinese (Taiwan): 侄女
Russian: племянница
Korean: 조카
Urdu: بھتیجی
Hungarian: unokahúg
Romanian: nepoată
Estonian: vennatütar
Malayalam: അനന്തരവന്
Portuguese (Portugal): sobrinha
Malay: anak saudara perempuan
Filipino: pamangking babae
Indonesian: keponakan perempuan
Portuguese (Brazil): sobrinha
Serbian: нећака
Telugu: మేనకం
Japanese: 姪
Slovak: neter

What Are Synonyms of the Word Niece?

While the word niece is a very specific word for which there is no exact synonym, there are many ways that a person can refer to their relatives. Using this list of synonyms of the word relative from Power Thesaurus, you can describe all kinds of relations:

agnate
associate
association
aunt
blood
brother
brother-in-law
clansperson
cognate
comparative
comparison
congener
congeneric
connection
consanguinity
cousin
domestic
family
family member
father
father-in-law
folk
folks
granddaughter
grandparents
great-grandparents
home
household
in-law
in-laws
kin
kindred
kinsfolk
kinship
kinsman
kinsperson
kinswoman
link
loved one
member of the family
mother-in-law
nephew
next of kin
parent
proximity
ratio
relation
relationship
relative
respect
sib
sibling
sister-in-law
stepbrother
stepparent
stepsister
uncle

Conclusion

In conclusion, the word niece refers to the daughter of a person’s brother or sister. A person’s niece would refer to that person as their aunt or uncle, depending on their gender. If a person’s brother or sister had a male child, this would be called a nephew.

There is no exact term for the gender-neutral or nonbinary child of a person’s sibling, but many people use the word nibling.

Sources:

Kevin Miller is a growth marketer with an extensive background in Search Engine Optimization, paid acquisition and email marketing. He is also an online editor and writer based out of Los Angeles, CA. He studied at Georgetown University, worked at Google and became infatuated with English Grammar and for years has been diving into the language, demystifying the do's and don'ts for all who share the same passion! He can be found online here.