Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26599100-20150708142030/@comment-26574811-20150708144905

Musume CAN translate to daughters. In Japanese, "son" is Musuko (息子) while "daughter" is Musume (娘).

Musume can mean maiden, girl or daughter, personally I prefer "shipgirl", but "shipmaiden" is fine too.

Judging from the fact of devs stating that shipgirls becomes normal girls after being dismantled, they are not born in the base, but some shipgirls' library introduction features them stating themselves being "born" in certain naval bases back in WWII.

Well, there's a fanart setting that can explain this: Normal girls + equipments + memory of the historical ship=Kanmusu, that's why they introduce themselves as being born in certain shipyards, but the girl inside probably wasn't.