Where do the words for daughter, son, aunt, uncle, mother, father, cousin, nephew, niece come from?

Solution 1:

I extracted the following from the online Webster Dictionary. It's interesting to see how all these words were transformed from Latin/Greek/Old High German/Middle English to the current English words.

Note: I know that this does not exactly answer your question, since you actually want to know if the words derived from words with other meanings. But I think that having the full list of originating languages here may be useful as other answers to your question may refer to it.

DAUGHTER

Middle English, doughter, from Old English dohtor; akin to Old High German tohter daughter, Greek thygatēr

First Known Use: before 12th century

SON

Middle English sone, from Old English sunu; akin to Old High German sun son, Greek hyios

First Known Use: before 12th century

AUNT

Middle English, from Old French ante, from Latin amita; akin to Old High German amma mother, nurse, Greek amma nurse

First Known Use: 14th century

UNCLE

Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin avunculus mother's brother; akin to Old English ēam uncle, Welsh ewythr, Latin avus grandfather

First Known Use: 14th century

MOTHER

Middle English moder, from Old English mōdor; akin to Old High German muoter mother, Latin mater, Greek mētēr, Sanskrit mātṛ

First Known Use: before 12th century

FATHER

Middle English fader, from Old English fæder; akin to Old High German fater father, Latin pater, Greek patēr

First Known Use: before 12th century

COUSIN

Middle English cosin, from Anglo-French cusin, cosin, from Latin consobrinus, from com- + sobrinus second cousin, from soror sister — more at sister

First Known Use: 13th century

NEPHEW

Middle English nevew, from Anglo-French nevou, neveu, from Latin nepot-, nepos grandson, nephew; akin to Old English nefa grandson, nephew, Sanskrit napāt grandson

First Known Use: 14th century

NIECE

Middle English nece granddaughter, niece, from Anglo-French nece, niece, from Late Latin neptia, from Latin neptis; akin to Latin nepot-, nepos grandson, nephew

First Known Use: 14th century

Reference:

http://www.merriam-webster.com

Solution 2:

etymonline.com gives the origins and original-language meanings of most of these words (with the exception of the meaning of "daughter", which John Cowan describes in his answer).

In brief, focusing on meanings:

Mother meant "female parent" in Old English, and presumably something similar in its origin languages. It was

"[b]ased ultimately on the baby-talk form *mā- (2); with the kinship term suffix *-ter-"

Father derived similarly, but there is this additional note:

Spelling with -th- (15c.) reflects widespread phonetic shift in Middle English that turned -der to -ther in many words

Son is ultimately

a derived noun from root *seue- (1) "to give birth"

and came to mean "son, descendant" in Old English.

Cousin:

from Latin consobrinus "cousin," originally "mother's sister's son,"

Nephew in PIE meant

"grandchild," and in a general sense, "male descendant other than son"

This became "sister's son, grandson, descendant," in Latin. Niece is a Late Latin feminine form of the Latin for "nephew".

Aunt has this:

from Latin amita "paternal aunt" diminutive of *amma a baby-talk word for "mother"

And uncle:

from Latin avunculus "mother's brother," literally "little grandfather," diminutive of avus "grandfather," from PIE root *awo- "grandfather, adult male relative other than one's father" [...] Replaced Old English eam (usually maternal; paternal uncle was fædera).

Child, similar to the example sentence in the question, relates to words meaning "womb"/"pregnant", coming to mean ""fetus, infant, unborn or newly born person" in Old English.

Solution 3:

I was searching for the origin of daughter in my mother language, Persian, and then I found this post and I thought it's worth sharing it. In ancient Persia the young female member of family, basically daughter, were called doog taar 'doog' meant milk and the 'taar' at the end makes it a noun meaning the person who milk the cows. This later changed in Persian to dookh taar and now in Farsi dokh taar - kh in Farsi is pronounce pretty much similar to German's gh and this word in German is pronounced very similar to Farsi.

Just in case someone needs a reference here is the link to Wiki, however, it's in Farsi language: This Link