哥哥
gē ge
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
An older brother, a brother born before you. Chinese always says whether a brother is older or younger: the younger one is 弟弟. The second syllable has a neutral tone: gēge. 大哥 is the eldest brother, and also a friendly way to address a man a little older than you.
Anh trai, người anh lớn tuổi hơn mình. Cũng như tiếng Việt, tiếng Trung phân biệt anh với em: em trai là 弟弟. Âm tiết thứ hai đọc thanh nhẹ: gēge. 大哥 là anh cả, cũng là cách gọi thân mật một người đàn ông lớn tuổi hơn mình một chút.
NounRegister: neutral
Examples
Editorial example (illustrative, not a corpus attestation) — awaiting a native-speaker check
Sources & notes
Hán-Việt bridge batch 063 (2026-11-14). Headword, Traditional form and pinyin checked against CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0) source ↗ · Hán-Việt reading: Unihan kVietnamese source ↗ · No Vietnamese entry is linked as its twin; the Hán-Việt reading is given character by character. Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Common questions
What does “哥哥” mean?
An older brother, a brother born before you. Chinese always says whether a brother is older or younger: the younger one is 弟弟. The second syllable has a neutral tone: gēge. 大哥 is the eldest brother, and also a friendly way to address a man a little older than you.
Is “哥哥” formal or informal?
哥哥 is generally neutral.