Japanese honorifics are small titles added to the end of a person's name — san (さん), sama (様), kun (君), chan (ちゃん) — to signal respect, affection, or rank. They attach to the name, not the sentence: Tanaka becomes Tanaka-san, the all-purpose "Mr./Ms. Tanaka."
Get one habit right and you're safe almost everywhere: last name plus san. Everything else is nuance — real, but nuance — that you pick up by ear as you go.
San: the safe default
San (さん) is the workhorse — Mr., Ms., and Mx. folded into one syllable, with no gender attached and no formality to overthink. Add it to a last name (Yamada-san), a full name, or a first name once you know someone a little.
Shops and roles take it too. When you're unsure which honorific fits, san is never the wrong choice.
The rest of the family
Each of the others narrows the feeling:
| Japanese | Romaji | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| さん | san | Mr./Ms./Mx. — safe for anyone |
| 様 | sama | elevated respect — customers, deities, letters |
| 君 | kun | younger men, male juniors at work |
| ちゃん | chan | children, close friends, pets, cute things |
| 先生 | sensei | teachers, doctors, artists |
Sama (様) raises san up a level of formality. Customers become okyakusama (お客様), literally "honored guest"; gods are kamisama (神様); and it signs off the address on a formal letter.
Kun (君) goes to boys and to male juniors at work. Chan (ちゃん) is the warm, cute one — for kids, close female friends, pets, and mascots (Japan's celebrity bear is affectionately Kumamon-chan).
Sensei (先生) stands apart as a title in its own right, for anyone who teaches or masters a craft: schoolteachers, doctors, novelists, even manga artists. You can call someone sensei with no name attached at all.
Senpai and kohai
Schools and workplaces run on a quiet hierarchy of senpai (先輩), your seniors, and kohai (後輩), your juniors. A first-year student calls a second-year senpai; the senpai looks out for the kohai in return.
The bond outlasts school, too — the words follow people into companies, sports teams, and clubs, quietly setting the tone for who defers to whom. And yes, this is the senpai of a thousand anime jokes.
Two rules you can't break
Never attach an honorific to your own name. Introducing yourself, you're simply "Tanaka desu" (田中です) — adding -san to yourself sounds comically self-important. Honorifics are respect you give others, never claim for yourself.
The second rule: dropping honorifics on purpose — yobisute (呼び捨て), literally "call and discard" — is reserved for family, lovers, and close old friends. Going from Tanaka-san to plain Tanaka is a small intimacy milestone, not a casual shortcut. Wait to be invited, or keep the san.
Should visitors use them?
Yes, and the safe version is easy: take a person's last name and add san. Yamada-san, Suzuki-san, done. You don't need kun, chan, or sama to be polite — those come with feel over time.
Honorifics also quietly fill a gap left by Japanese pronouns, which speakers avoid wherever they can; often a name-plus-san sits exactly where English would say "you." You can see how that works in our guide to Japanese pronouns.
Keep learning Japanese
Honorifics are your first lesson in reading the room in Japanese — tiny words carrying a lot of respect. Practice hearing them in real greetings and introductions, with audio and spaced repetition, in the free essential Japanese phrases lessons in the Pretalk app.
