男朋友
nán péng you
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
A boyfriend: the man or boy someone is going out with. It means a partner, not just any friend who is male; that is simply 朋友. 我男朋友 or 我的男朋友 is 'my boyfriend', and 有男朋友 'to have a boyfriend'.
Bạn trai theo nghĩa người yêu. Một người bạn bình thường là nam thì chỉ gọi là 朋友. 我男朋友 là “bạn trai tôi”, 有男朋友 là “có bạn trai”.
NounRegister: neutral
Examples
Editorial example (illustrative, not a corpus attestation) — awaiting a native-speaker check
Sources & notes
Hán-Việt bridge batch 064 (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 “男朋友” mean?
A boyfriend: the man or boy someone is going out with. It means a partner, not just any friend who is male; that is simply 朋友. 我男朋友 or 我的男朋友 is 'my boyfriend', and 有男朋友 'to have a boyfriend'. Literally: male friend
Is “男朋友” formal or informal?
男朋友 is generally neutral.