Definition
The daughter of one's brother or sister. In legal contexts, the term arises most frequently in the construction of wills, intestate succession statutes, and trust instruments, where a testator or legislature has used "niece" to designate a class of beneficiaries. Courts must determine whether the term, as used in a particular instrument or statute, extends beyond blood nieces to include nieces by marriage (i.e., the daughters of a brother-in-law or sister-in-law) or nieces by adoption.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A daughter of one's sibling, brother-in-law, or sister-in-law; either the daughter of one's brother or of one's sister. Secondarily, a daughter of one's cousin or cousin-in-law.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): In earlier usage, "niece" was a broader relational term meaning a relative in general, or even a granddaughter or grandson. The narrower sense — a daughter of one's brother or sister, or of one's brother-in-law or sister-in-law — was already the dominant meaning by 1913 but coexisted with the archaic general sense.
The legal definition tracks the modern common meaning closely but is stricter in one important direction: legal sources define "niece" exclusively by blood relation (daughter of a brother or sister), whereas ordinary usage comfortably includes nieces by marriage. That gap matters when a will or statute uses the word without elaboration — courts have had to decide whether a testator's niece-in-law falls within the gift.
Common Confusion
"Niece" in older legal and literary texts occasionally appears as a euphemism for an illegitimate daughter or a kept woman, a usage carried over from French and Latin ecclesiastical contexts. Researchers encountering the term in historical documents — particularly pre-19th century wills, ecclesiastical records, or chancery proceedings — should not assume the blood-relation meaning without context. The archaic Webster's sense (grandchild or general descendant) has the same potential to mislead in early modern sources.
Why It Matters in Research
The principal research context for this term is wills and succession. When a testator leaves a bequest to "my nieces" or "the children of my brothers and sisters," courts must interpret whether half-blood nieces, adopted nieces, or nieces by marriage are included. Statutory schemes for intestate succession may define the class differently from how a particular testator used the word.
Historical sources carry a specific trap: the pre-modern meaning of "niece" as a general female relative or granddaughter (documented in Webster's 1913 as obsolete but present in Jonson, Wyclif, and Shakespeare) can produce misreadings of early wills and chancery documents. A 16th or 17th century reference to "my niece" may not describe a sibling's daughter at all.
In chancery and equity records, the term sometimes served as a polite or formulaic substitute for an illegitimate daughter or a mistress, particularly in continental European legal traditions that influenced English ecclesiastical and equity courts. This usage is rare but not unknown in English sources.
For corpus researchers working across jurisdictions, note that civil law systems (and their American descendants, particularly Louisiana) may use equivalent terms within a framework of degrees of kinship that produces different default inclusion rules than common law succession statutes.
The cross-reference in Bouvier to LEGACY and in Black's to NEPHEW signals that the working legal content on this term historically lived in those neighboring entries — a researcher who stops at the "niece" entry in a historical dictionary may be missing the substantive discussion.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries define "niece" identically and tersely: the daughter of one's brother or sister. The shared citation to Ambl. 514 (Ambler's Chancery Reports) anchors the definition in a legacy dispute — appropriate, since will construction is where the term most often required judicial attention. Bouvier adds a second citation (1 Jac. 207) and cross-references both NEPHEW and LEGACY, showing slightly more awareness of the term's practical context. Anderson adds nothing beyond directing readers to NEPHEW.
The historical dictionaries are silent on the marriage question (nieces by affinity), the adoption question, and the half-blood question — all of which have generated litigation. They are also silent on the archaic meanings, which is a gap for researchers using these dictionaries to interpret pre-19th century instruments.
Jurisdictional Note
American intestate succession statutes typically use "niece" consistently with the blood-relation definition, but the treatment of adopted nieces varies by state depending on whether the relevant adoption statute explicitly equalizes adopted and biological relatives for inheritance purposes. Louisiana's civil law framework defines kinship by degree rather than by common law categories, which can affect how a class gift to "nieces" is construed.