The most common honorifics include:
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 or the
OS-tans representing operating systems. 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- (お-) and
go- (ご-) are honorific prefixes used to exalt nouns. They can be applied to things like a garden (お庭,
oniwa) or to people in conjunction with a suffix, like a doctor (お医者さん,
oishasan).
O- is used for words with Japanese roots, while
go- is used for words with Chinese roots, 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 ==