First, this is my very first post here, and I am a complete newbie when it
comes to the Japanese language. I have, however, been very interested in the
Japanese language and culture: I have been doing a Japanese martial art for 14
years, have been reading about martial arts history in Japan for a long time,
and am a big Manga/Anime fan. Please go easy on me :)

I have a question about constructing a phrase in Japanese. I would like to say
"wolf child" in Japanese and am wondering whether it is essential to use の in
the middle, between wolf and child.

  * Is it correct to use 子 (ko) to denote "child" in general?
  * Is "Ōkami no ko" correct?
  * How about "Ōkami ko"? Is it 100% wrong to drop "no" from the middle?

Basically, my question is whether it's possible to say "wolf child" instead of
"child of wolf" in Japanese (e.g., in spoken language versus formal/written
language), and if so, would dropping の (no) accomplish this?
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word-choice particle-の spoken-language animals
Use of の + how to construct a phrase without it
It's not 100 percent wrong, but it is less common. There are examples of its
use online. "Ookami no ko" literally means "child of a wolf" or "wolf's
child", and depending on context, in fantasy/fiction could refer to a human
child with wolf attributes or raised by wolves, or could be the more
biologically correct "wolf's pup/ wolf cub". Although the form without "no",
"オオカミ子" does show up in an online search, it's more rare, and seems to always
be a reference to actual wolf pups, and not the fictional human variants.
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There is indeed a **prefix** 子, which appears to be quite
[productive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_\(linguistics\)), i.e.
for most animals you can simply prepend 子 to the name of an animal to get a
word for this animal's young, e.g.

  * 子犬 _koinu_ pup
  * 子猫 _koneko_ kitten
  * 子鹿 _kojika_ fawn
  * 子牛 _koushi_ calf
  * 子山羊 _koyagi_ kid

(Actually, I wish it were this simple in English.)

However, for wolves オオカミの子 seems to be more common. Maybe because オオカミ starts
with a long オオ, or because it feels like it already has a prefix おお (its
etymology appears to be indeed 大 + かみ).

In any case, there is no such productive suffix now (although to make things
confusing, there are 犬子, 鹿子, and possibly others).
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Basically, we don't say "an animal name + 子" like 牛子, オオカミ子 as the meaning of
a child of animals, we say "an animal name + の子" or "子 + an animal name" like
牛の子 and 子牛 as the meaning of that.

However オオカミの子 can mean "child raised by wolves". I think this is because it
became a novel and manga.
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