The Japanese language makes use of a system of honorific speech, called , which includes very honorific suffixes and prefixes when talking, or referring, to others in a conversation. Suffixes are often gender-specific at the end of names, while prefixes are attached to the beginning of many nouns. Honorific affixes also indicate the speaker's social status and their relationship with the listener, and are often used alongside other components of Japanese honorific speech.Reischauer, Edwin O. (2002). Encyclopedia of Japan. Tōkyō: NetAdvance Inc.
Honorific suffixes are generally used when referring to the person someone is talking to or about, but not when referring to oneself. The omission of affixes indicates that the speaker has known the addressee for a while, or that the listener joined the company or school at the same time or later.
Common honorifics The most common honorifics include: + HonorificApproximate English equivalentUsed forSan ()Mr. / Ms.Workers in a company will often address and refer to their superiors using -san. Relative strangers will address each other using -san. Signals respect.Sama (, )Sir / Ma'amDear customer (o-kyaku-sama)Ladies and Gentlemen (mina-sama)Your Honor (judges)Your Lordship/Your Ladyship (judges of higher courts)Your Grace / Your Reverence / Your Eminence / Your Holiness (religious authorities)Your Omnipotence (deities)Indicates deep respect for deities, honored guests or esteemed clients, authorities or superior adults.Kun (, )A term of endearment. Used by school teachers addressing their students, or by older co-workers to younger men.Chan ()Little or DearA term of endearment. Most frequently used for girls and small children, close friends, or lovers. Occasionally may be used to refer to a boy if that is his nickname. It is also used in fond terms of address for one's grandmother (Obā-chan) and grandfather (Ojī-chan). Tan ()LilBabies, moe anthropomorphismsSenpai ()SeniorSenior colleague and student or classmateSensei ()Teacher / Master (in the sense of "master and disciple") / Doctor / ProfessorUsed to refer to teachers as well as people who are experts in their respective fields, whether doctors, artists or lawyers.Hakase ()Doctor or PhDPersons with very high academic expertiseHeika ()Your MajestyEmperor, Empress, Empress Dowager or Grand Empress DowagerDenka ()Your Imperial HighnessPrinces and princesses of the Japanese Imperial FamilyKakka ()Your Excellency Used to address non-royal heads of state and government and other high-ranking government officials (ambassadors, cabinet ministers, and other high officials such as the United Nations Secretary-General or generals in an army).
San
, sometimes pronounced in Kansai dialect, is the most commonplace honorific and is a title of respect typically used between equals of any age. Although the closest analog in English are the honorifics "Mr.", "Miss", "Ms.", or "Mrs.", -san is almost universally added to a person's name; -san can be used in formal and informal contexts, regardless of the person's gender. It is also commonly used to convert common nouns into proper ones, as discussed below.
San may be used in combination with workplace nouns, so a bookseller might be addressed or referred to as and a butcher as .
San is sometimes used with company names. For example, the offices or shop of a company called Kojima Denki might be referred to as "Kojima Denki-san" by another nearby company. This may be seen on small maps often used in phone books and business cards in Japan, where the names of surrounding companies are written using -san.
San can be attached to the names of animals or even for cooking; "fish" can be referred to as , but both would be considered childish (akin to "Mr. Fish" or "Mr. Fishy" in English) and would be avoided in formal speech. When referring to their spouse as a third party in a conversation, married people often refer to them with -san.
Due to -san being gender-neutral and commonly used, it can refer to any stranger or acquaintance whom one does not see as a friend. However, it may not be appropriate when using it on someone close or when it is clear that other honorifics should be used.
Sama
is a more respectful version for individuals of a higher rank than oneself. Appropriate usages include divine entities, guests or customers (such as a sports venue announcer addressing members of the audience), and sometimes towards people one greatly admires. It is the root word for -san. Deities such as native Shinto kami and Jesus Christ are referred to as , meaning "Revered spirit-sama". When used to refer to oneself, -sama expresses extreme arrogance (or self-effacing irony), as in praising oneself to be of a higher rank, as with .
Sama customarily follows the addressee's name on all formal correspondence and postal services where the addressee is, or is interpreted as, a customer.
Sama also appears in such set phrases as , , or .
Kun
is generally used by people of senior status addressing or referring to those of junior status, or it can be used when referring to men in general, male children or male teenagers, or among male friends. It can be used by men or women when addressing a man to whom they are emotionally attached, or whom they have known for a long time. Although it may seem rude in workplaces, the suffix is also used by seniors when referring to juniors in both academic situations and workplaces, more typically when the two people are associated.
Although -kun is generally used for boys, it is not a hard rule. For example, -kun can be used to name a close personal friend or family member of any gender. In business settings, young female employees are addressed as -kun by older men of senior status. It can be used by male teachers addressing their female students.
Kun can mean different things depending on gender. Kun for women is a more respectful honorific than -chan, implying childlike cuteness. Kun is not only used to address females formally; it can also be used for a very close friend or family member. Calling a woman -kun is not insulting and can also mean that the person is respected, although that is not the normal implication. Rarely, sisters with the same name, such as "Miku", may be differentiated by calling one "Miku-chan" and the other "Miku-san" or "-sama", and on some occasions,"-kun". -Chan and -kun occasionally mean similar things. The general use of -kun for females implies respectful endearment and that the person being referred to is sweet and kind.
In the National Diet (Legislature), the Speaker of the House uses -kun when addressing Diet members and ministers. An exception was when Takako Doi was the Speaker of the lower house, where she used the title -san.
Chan
expresses that the speaker finds a person endearing. In general, -chan is used for young children, close friends, babies, grandparents and sometimes female adolescents. It may also be used towards cute animals, lovers, or youthful women. Chan is never used for strangers or people one has just met.
Although traditionally, honorifics are not applied to oneself, some people adopt the childlike affectation of referring to themselves in the third person using -chan (childlike because it suggests that one has not learned to distinguish between names used for oneself and names used by others). For example, a young girl named Kanako might call herself Kanako-chan rather than the first-person pronoun.
Tan is intended as an even cuter or affectionate variant of -chan. It evokes a small child's mispronunciation of that form of address, or baby talk – similar to how, for example, a speaker of English might use "widdle" instead of "little" when speaking to a baby. Moe anthropomorphisms are often labeled as -tan, e.g., the commercial mascot Habanero-tan, the manga figure Afghanis-tan, the OS-tans representing operating systems or the unofficial Wikipedia mascot Wikipe-tan. A more notorious use of the honorific was for the murderer Nevada-tan.
Bō also expresses endearment. Like -chan, it can be used for young children but exclusively for boys instead of girls. See diminutive and hypocorism for more info on this linguistic phenomenon.
Senpai and kōhai
is used to address or refer to one's older or more senior colleagues/students in a school, workplace, dojo, or sports club. Junior members of a group are referred to as , but never addressed as such. Teachers are not senpai, but sensei.
Sensei and hakase is used to refer to or address teachers, doctors, politicians, lawyers, and other authority figures. It is used to show respect to someone who has achieved mastery in an art form or some other skill, such as accomplished novelists, musicians, artists, and martial artists. In Japanese martial arts, sensei typically refers to someone who is the head of a dojo. As with senpai, sensei can be used not only as a suffix but also as a stand-alone title. is sometimes used when addressing holders of a doctoral degree.
Shi
is used in formal writing and sometimes in very formal speech for referring to a person who is unfamiliar to the speaker, typically a person known through publications whom the speaker has never actually met. For example, the -shi title is common in the speech of newsreaders. It is preferred in legal documents, academic journals, and other formal written styles. Once a person's name has been used with -shi, the person can be referred to with shi alone, without the name, as long as only one person is being referred to.
O- and go- prefix O- () and go- () are honorific prefixes used to exalt nouns. They can be applied to things like a garden (, oniwa) or to people in conjunction with a suffix, like a . O- is used for words with Japanese roots, while go- is used for words with Chinese roots, although exceptions such as , oishasan above, where o- is used with Chinese words still occur. They are only ever used in the second or third person, and when applied to an object indicate respect for the owner of the object rather than the object itself. For example, one would refer to the parents of another as while their own parents would be .
Pitch accent Honorifics do not tend to alter the pitch accent of the names they suffix ( → ; → ). Notably, adds an accent to an unaccented name ( → ; → ). Note that this usage, which preserves the accentual patterns of names, is distinct from the original meaning of -shi which was used for feudal clans and which overrides the patterns of names. Thus, if is pronounced (the name's accent is preserved), it means "Lord Tokugawa"; but if it is pronounced (the name's accent is overridden), it means "the Tokugawa clan".
Usage Although honorifics are not essential to the grammar of Japanese, they are a fundamental part of its sociolinguistics, and their proper use is deemed essential to proficient and appropriate speech.
The use of honorifics is closely related to Japanese social structures and hierarchies. For example, a 1986 study on the notion that Japanese women spoke more politely than men examined each sex's use of honorifics found that while women spoke more politely on average than men, both sexes used the same level of politeness in the same relative situation. Thus, the difference in politeness was a result of the average social station of women versus men as opposed to an inherent characteristic. Usage in this respect has changed over time as well. A 2012 study from Kobe Shoin Women's University found that the use of honorific suffixes and other polite speech markers have increased significantly over time, while age, sex, and other social variables have become less significant. The paper concluded that honorifics have shifted from a basis in power dynamics to one of personal distance.Inoue, Fumio. 1999. Keigo-wa Kowaku-nai. Tokyo: Kodansha