Wife character 妻

妻 means “wife” in Mandarin and Japanese, but its use differs by language. In Mandarin, 妻子 is a neutral term for “wife,” though it can feel more written than the colloquial 老婆.

In Classical Chinese, 妻子 can also mean “wife and children”; the surrounding passage tells you whether it means one person or a family.

Does 妻 mean my wife?

In Japanese, usually—but 妻 does not itself mean “my.” 妻は… normally refers to the writer’s own wife, while 田中さんの妻 explicitly names Tanaka’s wife.

For polite Japanese conversation about someone else’s wife, 奥さん or the more respectful 奥様 is conventional. 妻 also appears in neutral third-person descriptions; the word itself is not insulting.

Where did 妻 come from?

Its written history reaches back to late Shang China. The earliest forms are attested on oracle bones—animal bones and turtle shells inscribed for divination—roughly 1300–1050 BCE. Later forms appear in bronze inscriptions, Warring States writing, and successive seal, clerical, and regular scripts.

The early graph shows a long-haired woman beside a hand. One interpretation connects the hand with taking a woman as a wife; that is an explanation of the old drawing, not a settled account of every marriage. A Han-era dictionary, Shuowen Jiezi, glossed 妻 as “a woman paired with a husband.”

In older Japanese usage, つま could refer to a spouse or lover of any sex; the meaning later narrowed to “wife.” This is the history of a Japanese word, separate from the ancient Chinese graph. The character’s font-drawn shape can vary without changing its meaning.