In Japanese, bokukko ボクっ娘 means a girl that uses boku 僕, a masculine first person pronoun.
It's also spelled bokukko 僕っ娘, ボクっ子, or 僕っ子. Also called boku-shoujo ボク少女, or 僕少女, "boku girl."
Definition
The word bokukko is a portmanteau of boku 僕 and ko 子, "child," spelled with the kanji for "daughter," musume 娘, which then means "girl," ko 娘. Various terms for types of girls follow this same pattern, like orekko オレっ娘, a girl that uses ore 俺 instead..
See ~kko ～っ娘 for details.
In general, girls don't use boku in real life. It's more something that anime characters use.
Although some female characters that use boku are tomboyish, more often than not the pronoun is just a random quirk and doesn't mean anything in particular.
- In Darling in The Franxx, ダーリン・イン・ザ・フランキス, Zero Two ゼロツー uses boku.
- In DanMachi ダンまち, Hestia ヘスティア uses boku.
- Context: Kousaka Shigure 香坂しぐれ, a ninja-esque swords and weapons master, practices the fine art of cutting blades with a blade.
- chi, kin, chin, kyoun, kin
チン キン チン キョウン キン
*sound effect of blades being cut.* - dosu'
ドスッ
*sound effect for blade falling in the tatami floor.* - oi!! boku ni nani ka you ga aru no ka?
おい！！ボクに何か用があるのか？
Hey!! Do [you] have any business with me? - giku'
ギクッ
*gulp* - a, iya, sono...
あ、いや その･･･
Ah, erm, that is...- All these three words are interjections.
vs. Otokonoko
The existence of bokukko characters makes it more difficult to determine the gender of a character by their first person pronoun. If a character looks like a girl and uses boku, they can be either:
- A bokukko, a girl that uses boku.
- An otokonoko 男の娘, a boy that looks like a girl, also known as a "trap" character. Since they're a boy, it makes sense that they would use the masculine first person pronoun.
- Context: a group of girls hear a rumor that one of the female students is actually a dude. They go investigate, questioning the girl, and it turns out she uses boku as pronoun.
- are... Aozora-san φ ichininshou φ "boku" nano?
あれ・・・青空さん一人称「ボク」なの？
Huh... Aozora-san's first person pronoun is boku? - kono jiten de {sude ni} auto-ppoi desu ga...
この時点ですでにアウトっぽいですが･･･
By this point, [it] already seems [she] is out, though... (literally.)
Given this, it already feels like the rumor is true...- kono jiten de - "by this point in time," used in the sense of "given that this happened, we can already say something else is true," and the sort.
- auto - "out" in the baseball sense. When someone is "out" it means they failed a test by going outside what is allowed. In this case, it would be "safe," seefu セーフ, if Aozora is confirmed to be a girl, but it seems she's "out" already (i.e. it's confirmed she is NOT a girl) by using boku.
- bokukko no kanousei ga aru kara mada nantomo...
ボクっ娘の可能性があるからまだなんとも･･･
There's a chance [she] is a bokukko, so [we can't say] anything yet...
- mada nantomo ienai
まだなんとも言えない
[We] can't to say anything yet. (i.e. we can't say for sure that she's a boy based only on this information.)
- mada nantomo ienai
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