‘名词’ (míng cí) literally means ‘name word’ — ‘名’ (míng) means ‘name’ or ‘reputation’, and ‘词’ (cí) means ‘word’ or ‘term’. Together, they refer to a grammatical category: words that name people, places, things, concepts, or phenomena — what English calls ‘nouns’. In Chinese grammar, nouns often appear as subjects or objects in sentences and typically do not change form for number or case.

Unlike English, Chinese nouns rarely require articles (like ‘a’ or ‘the’) and are not marked for plural by default — context or quantifiers (e.g., 一些, 几个) indicate quantity. Common noun types include proper nouns (e.g., 北京), common nouns (e.g., 桌子), and abstract nouns (e.g., 自由). Recognizing nouns is essential for sentence parsing, especially since word order and function words (like 的, 了) help signal their grammatical role.