Not by Name – How Japanese People Really Address Each Other in Everyday Life

Dlaczego w Japonii rzadko woła się ludzi po imieniu? Artykuł o nazwiskach, -san, sensei, firmowych tytułach i tym, jak język odsłania hierarchię relacji.

A minefield waiting for an unwary foreigner

Imagine you are sitting in a small Tokyo eatery with grills built into the tables, smoke from yakiniku mixing with clouds of rice steam, some old hit from the 90s trickling from the speakers. You want to call the waitress. In Polish it would be easy: “Excuse me! Ma’am!”. In Japanese the language suddenly sticks in your throat like a fishbone. Obasan – “auntie” – looks innocent enough in the dictionary, but in practice it is used for women “around forty and up”. Say that to someone who is twenty-four and still sees herself as oneesan, “older sister”, not “auntie”, and you have just produced a small local social drama. Oneesan sounds nicer – that is how waitresses are called in izakaya: “Sumimasen, oneesan!” – a bit like “hey, ma’am”, but with a warmer, sisterly tone. Except that if this “sister” is already past thirty, and maybe has a husband and children, she may well be sick and tired of being the eternal “onee-chan from the restaurant”. On top of that there is ojōsan, something between “young lady” and “young lady from a good family” – in an old teahouse it can sound elegant, in a smoky corner bar it starts to resemble awkward flirting. In a single simple “hey, excuse me” there is a whole minefield of relations, age, status and hidden backstories.

This is not just about one waitress. In Japan, almost every form of address sidesteps the given name and leans on who a person is for others. At the clinic, a simple “Sensei, chotto…” is enough and everyone knows it is the doctor being addressed, not a teacher or a master. At an election rally, a candidate who doesn’t teach anything at all can also be a sensei. In the company you don’t have to say “Suzuki-san”, you can simply address him as buchō – division director, kachō – section chief, shachō – company president. Instead of “you” there appears a family name, a function, a title: you don’t ask “What do you think about this?”, you ask “What does the quality director think about this?” or “Buchō wa dō omoimasu ka?”. The small suffix -san, the slightly warmer -kun, the childlike and fluffy -chan, the lofty, almost samurai-like -sama – these tiny pieces of language arrange a subtle architecture of distance and closeness between people. Running through all of this is a very clear philosophical assumption: a person is first and foremost a relation – a son, a pupil, a junior colleague, a superior – and only second a lonely island by the name of Tarō or Yumi. The given name carries the individual. The title inscribes that individual into the cosmos of social order.

And this did not come from nowhere. Today’s “Suzuki-san” or “Tanaka-san” sound gentle and ordinary, but behind them stand centuries in which names and surnames were weapons, privileges and instruments of power. A samurai could bear several names over the course of a lifetime: a childhood yōmyō ending in “-maru”, an adult name after the genpuku coming-of-age ceremony with a syllable of dependence gifted by his lord, a monastic name, a posthumous name. The most delicate was the imina – the “naked name” that one tried not to utter in public. You could really be called by your given name only by someone above you: a daimyō, a superior. When the lord shouted “Masamune!” with no -sama or -dono, he was saying one thing: “I am the one who decides how close I may come, and you have no right to answer me in kind.” The name became a bare nape under the hand of power. To this day it is the family name – lineage, house, company – that stands in the foreground of a Japanese sentence, and the given name hides behind it like something intimate. Today’s text will be precisely about this: about a culture in which the given name is often left unsaid, and about how very much the way we call others betrays our attitude toward power, closeness and the very “self”. Come along.

Dlaczego w Japonii rzadko woła się ludzi po imieniu? Artykuł o nazwiskach, -san, sensei, firmowych tytułach i tym, jak język odsłania hierarchię relacji.

Scene

In the office

At nine in the morning, the open space on the sixteenth floor in Marunouchi is already as hot as an induction cooktop. The air conditioning hums softly, evenly, like the sea in the background, but above this hum another rhythm floats – short bows, drawn-out “ohayō gozaimasu”, the clatter of keys, the rustle of plastic ID cards.

At the entrance Ayumi stops, a young employee, fresh, in her first year at the company. She takes off her coat as if laying it down in offering – carefully, neatly, over the back of her chair. Then she straightens up, turns toward the rows of desks and takes a half-step forward.

– Ohayō gozaimasu! – she calls out clearly, a bit too loudly, with the energy of someone who still feels like a guest here.

A few heads rise above the monitors. The replies come back like an echo, but this echo has names – or rather, lacks them.

– Aa, ohayō, Satō-san.
– Ohayō, Yamada-kun.
– Ohayō gozaimasu, Suzuki-buchō.

She herself is “Satō-san”. Not once will “Ayumi” be spoken. Her given name hangs somewhere in the HR system, on her insurance card, at home on her mother’s shopping list. Here she exists as a family name plus a small, polite suffix: -san.

As she walks between the desks toward her own place, she makes small bows – not so much before people as before their roles. In front of the sales department – a deeper one, because there sits Tanaka-buchō, the division director, with a permanently furrowed brow. In front of the senior colleague from her own section – shorter, but with a faint smile:

– Ohayō gozaimasu, Kobayashi-senpai.

Senpai is not a name. It is a position on the invisible steps of hierarchy. He answers half-jokingly:

– Aa, Satō-san, hayai ne – “early today” – and this “Satō-san” is soft, almost warm. He doesn’t need to know her given name to know that she is diligent.

A few desks further on, life that has no need of given names is already in full swing. By the window sits Suzuki-buchō. No one will call him “Hiroshi”, although that is his given name. Not even as a joke. For the younger employees he is almost the embodiment of the function itself – a graphite-colored suit, three phones, a separate place for business cards in a leather case. When his mobile rings, he picks it up in a single movement, already halfway through the first ring.

– Hai, Suzuki desu – he answers the phone and introduces himself by family name, as ritual requires. Never “Hiroshi desu”.

After a moment he stands up.

– Tanaka-kachō, chotto ii desu ka? – he addresses a lower-level manager. Not “Tanaka-san”, but kachō – section chief. Tanaka (that is his family name) stands up at once, with his back slightly hunched.

– Hai, Suzuki-buchō.

In this brief exchange not a single given name appears, and yet everything important has been said: who stands higher, who lower, who may ask, and who must listen. The language has sketched out the hierarchy before anyone has time to inquire.

Throughout the whole morning the open space sounds like a choir of family names and functions.

– Yamada-kun, kono shiryou, onegai.

Yamada is the new guy fresh out of university – hence -kun. This suffix is like an invisible badge reading “junior”. In the mouth of a superior it sounds friendly, but it also clearly says: “you are younger than I am, you may make mistakes, I will correct you”. If an older female colleague from the department were to call him “Yamada-san”, the difference would sound like a change in temperature – more distance, less “care”. Is she offended? Or perhaps the situation calls for a very official stance?

Behind Yamada-kun sits Mori-san (we don’t know her given name, we know only the family name), a woman in her forties, a specialist in external systems. When she answers a call from a client, her voice becomes even smoother.

– Mori de gozaimasu…
– Itsumo o-sewa ni natte orimasu, Taniguchi-sama.

For the outside world she is called “Mori”. The client is “Taniguchi-sama”, with every syllable underlined – an extra degree of humility, the suffix -sama, highly honorific, once used to address samurai. Here language not only sketches the internal hierarchy, but also bows to the world outside. There is no “Sir/Madam” pronoun, but -sama is something more – it is a small bow built into the family name.

Given names do appear at times – but always behind closed doors. In the small kitchenette next to the coffee machines, three young employees are standing. The kettle is hissing, the bowls from instant miso are waiting in the sink.

– Ne, ne, Ayu-chan… – begins a female colleague from another department quietly, once she has made sure the door to the corridor is closed. Here, in this semi-private space, “Ayu” can be a diminutive of “Ayumi”. With the attached -chan, it sounds like an invitation into the circle of “truly one’s own”.

Satō/Ayumi reacts almost instinctively: she turns around sharply, as if overhearing a secret. The word “Ayu-chan” is different – soft, close. It will never be heard at the desk when Suzuki-buchō walks by, but here, beside a mug of coffee, it can exist in parallel with the official “Satō-san”.

Somewhere in the background another exception flickers – at the desk closer to the glass-walled conference room sits a young Frenchman. On his screen there is a sticker with his name written in the Latin alphabet: “Julien”. In the company he is “Julien-san”. It is a compromise between worlds: for him the first name is natural, for the Japanese the natural form is [family name] + “-san”.

Everyone knows Julien’s surname – it is on the business cards. But in his colleagues’ mouths it rarely appears. A foreigner is often treated as a separate category – somewhat excused from local rules, yet still drawn into the dense web of honorific suffixes.

On the board by the printer hang printed graphics – sales charts, attendance sheets, duty rosters. In every table there are surnames and given names/functions, never given names alone. “Satō Ayumi” in internal documents most often turns into just “Satō”. In welcome emails to new employees the HR department writes:

Satō Ayumi-sama…

“Ayumi” appears once, ceremonially, and then disappears under the more neutral surface of the family name. In everyday replies on Slack and in Outlook, only this will remain:

“Satō-san, arigatō gozaimasu.”

Even the IT system – seemingly impersonal – is part of the same logic. The avatar is the family name. The given name is a luxury that appears only once someone has let you behind their private screen.

At the end of the day, when the sun hides behind Tokyo Tower, the office begins to thin out. Someone gets up from their desk, takes their jacket from the back of the chair and turns toward the open space.

– Osaki ni shitsurei shimasu. – “Excuse me for leaving before you.”
From various sides voices answer:
– Otsukaresama deshita, Tanaka-san.
– Otsukare, Tanaka-kun.

Dlaczego w Japonii rzadko woła się ludzi po imieniu? Artykuł o nazwiskach, -san, sensei, firmowych tytułach i tym, jak język odsłania hierarchię relacji.

How do Japanese people address each other in everyday life?

If you ask a Japanese person what their given name is, they will answer without hesitation. If, however, you spend a few months with them at work, you may discover something strange: no one uses that name. Everyone is Satō-san, Suzuki-kachō, Tanaka-buchō. Given names – Haruka, Daichi, Yūko – exist as if in a second layer of reality, somewhat like private spirit-names, used only in selected circles.

The most basic form on which the entire Japanese system of addressing other people rests is precisely the family name plus a small polite suffix: -san, or -kun, or a functional one: junior manager kachō, division director buchō, and so on. “Suzuki-san” can be a female student, a department head, an elderly lady from the neighborhood or your peer from the same class. The language does not have to settle age or status at this moment; -san is like a soft cushion we place between “I” and “you”. It is default, safe, transparent. It does not barge into the private sphere with its shoes on, does not pretend a closeness that is not there.

For a Polish ear, the comparison with “pan” and “pani” is tempting, but -san is more flexible. Firstly, it does not distinguish gender. Both Mr. Suzuki and Ms. Suzuki are simply “Suzuki-san”. Secondly, it is not anchored as rigidly in formality. You can say “Suzuki-san” to a friend from the climbing club, to the neighbor across the hall, to co-workers you like but with whom you have not yet moved to a first-name basis. It is a mode of “conciliatory politeness”: we are well-disposed toward each other, perhaps even relatively close, but not “buddies”.

The family name here has a role that is not only polite but also cultural. In Japan, for centuries the family and the household have been the basic unit of social order, not the emancipated Western individual. The family name – myōji – says: “I belong to this lineage, to this line, to this group.” Using it instead of the given name is an everyday reminder that first you are someone’s child, an employee of company X, a member of class 3-B, and only somewhere later – a “You” in the psychological sense.

To this is added a second level: situations in which even that family name is unnecessary because the function alone is enough. At home, a child calls “otōsan”, “okāsan” – Dad, Mom (this still does not surprise us). But we go further: the older brother is “oniisan”, the older sister “oneesan” – their given names are also used much less often. Sometimes the same words are directed at complete strangers: you can call a waiter in a restaurant “oniisan”, and politely address an older lady in the street as “obasan” (“auntie”, though here it is easy to make a blunder if someone feels too young to be an “auntie”. Or another, worse blunder: “obaasan” – with that long “aa” – which means “grandma”. To very old ladies you can indeed address a friendly “grandma” / “obaasan”, but if a woman does not feel like a grandmother, our fate is not a happy one).

This leads to many awkward situations (awkward for the Japanese; for foreigners often half-comical). Imagine sitting in the evening in a crowded yakiniku-ya, a Japanese place with grill and sake. The air is thick with smoke escaping from the small grills built into the tables; some old SMAP song is playing from the speakers, in the corner a TV is silently showing the news.

At your table the first portions of karubi and tan have long since vanished, only a bowl after Korean kimchi remains, a few lemon wedges for the beer and an empty plate after the salad. The grill is hissing in sadly empty protest, so you need to call someone. You look at a young-looking waitress weaving between the tables – she may be around thirty (hard to say), her hair pinned up in a loose bun, wearing the company T-shirt with the logo and a black apron.

In Polish it would be simple: “Przepraszam! Proszę pani!”. In Japanese the language suddenly sticks in your throat like a fishbone. Obasan – auntie – seems safe in the dictionary, but in practice this word is for women “around forty and up”. Say that to someone who is 24 and still identifies with oneesan, the “older sister”, not the “auntie”, and you have just created a local social drama. On the other hand oneesan – older sister – sounds much nicer; after all, that is often how waitresses are called in izakaya: “Sumimasen, oneesan!” – a bit like “hey, ma’am” with a hint of “sister”.

But here too there is a trap: if the girl is over thirty and has had enough of being forever “onee-chan from the restaurant” (and maybe she has a husband or children), she may feel something patronizing in it, a slight reduction of her to the role of the eternally obliging “little sister”. On top of that, there is yet another variant, more old-fashioned and polite – “ojōsan”, something between “young miss” and “young lady from a good family”.

It might work, but it would sound strange in this smoky little joint. It could also sound like clumsy flirting, which we also want to avoid. So you sit there with chopsticks in hand, the grill is cooling, the meat is gone, and in your head a small politeness drama is playing out: how to call her without aging anyone, without infantilizing anyone, without sounding like a slightly drunk uncle from karaoke. And then a very Japanese solution to the problem dawns on you: you do not call her any “auntie” or “sister” at all, but cut across the whole system of roles with one magic move – you press the button built into the table, the yobidashi botan – the “call button”. Phew…

Returning to the main thread – the parents’ given names are often almost never used (which is actually fairly similar to Polish culture, though not in every household). A child grows up in a world in which Mum is Mum, and Father is Father – not “Takeshi” and “Mariko”. Of course, somewhere in the background the child knows what their names are, but the given names belong to the formal sphere: documents, signatures, the insurance card.

This habit flows very naturally beyond the family. A teacher at school is sensei – not “Ms Kowalska”. But the word sensei (先生) does not end at the classroom door. It is the title of a person who is above us: a teacher, doctor, lawyer, calligraphy master, and sometimes also a politician or a famous writer. At the clinic you call out: “Sensei, chotto…” and everyone understands that you mean the doctor. At an election rally the candidate can also be a sensei, even though he does not teach any subject.

In a company you do not have to say “Suzuki-san” at all in order to address someone. You can simply say buchō – division director, kachō – section chief, shachō – company president.

The family name disappears, leaving pure function – a little figurine on the organizational chart. A work colleague is senpai or kōhai, depending on which way we are looking (whether we have been there longer or shorter than them). The language is constantly updating the vertical grid: this one is above me, that one below me, this one I owe something to, on that one I rely.

Running through all of this is a very clear philosophical assumption: a person is first and foremost a relation – a son, a pupil, a junior colleague, a superior – and only second a lonely island by the name of Tarō or Yumi. The given name carries the individual. The title inscribes that individual into the cosmos of social order.

All of this is overlaid with a system of so-called “honorifics”, that is, polite suffixes and prefixes. To an ear used to anime it is a whole forest of -sans, -kuns and -chans that sound like labels stuck onto every name and surname. For a Japanese person these are not ornaments. They are microscopic but very precise tools for ordering reality.

The most commonly encountered -san we already know well: neutral, safe, tenderly nondescript. We hear -sama (様) less frequently – a boosted, almost ceremonial version. When a courier company addresses a parcel to you, the envelope will say “Jan Kowalski-sama”. In a message to a client, the polite “Tanaka-sama” shows that he is the party before whom we bow. In shrines, kami and buddhas receive their -sama like kings – and in this lies the memory of a world in which hierarchy extended far higher than the company board or the consumer.

On the other side there is -kun, a sound that immediately places someone “lower”: a younger colleague, subordinate, pupil. When a teacher says “Yamada-kun”, in that single kun there is both protectiveness and distance: “you are in my class, but you are still at the stage where I lead, you learn”. A boss addressing a young employee as “Sasaki-kun” softens the rigid hierarchy a little, but by no means breaks it.

Even closer, even warmer, is -chan. Children, younger sisters, beloved cats and dogs, the sweetest friends – all of them are -chan. “Mika-chan”, “Haru-chan”, “Momo-chan”. In the mouths of peers it sounds like a soft quilt; in the mouth of an older man toward a younger woman it can sound somewhat patronizing – it may be nice, but not necessarily in the office.

Somewhere in the background operates the less frequently heard -shi (氏), which is more often read than spoken. It appears in newspapers and reports as a neutral, impersonal “Mr/Ms X”: “Satō-shi” – “Mr Satō…”. A reservoir of formality in which one can safely keep someone at a distance.

On top of this there is a whole world of polite prefixes o- and go- before nouns – o-cha instead of plain tea cha, o-kane instead of bare “cash”, go-kazoku as “your (honorable) family”. Even an object then receives a small halo of respect. But that is a topic for a separate article.

The most interesting, however, is what… is not there. Japanese does have words for “you”: anata, kimi, omae. Their use is so socially mined, though, that in everyday conversation they are often simply avoided. Instead of “you” – a family name, a function, a title. I do not ask: “What do you think about this?”, but: “What does Tanaka-san think about this?” or simply: “Buchō wa dō omoimasu ka?”. Instead of a bare “you”, a mask of role stands between us, once again pushing aside the naked “I–you” relationship.

At the very end of this fan there is one more word that shows clearly how seriously these suffixes are taken: yobisute (呼び捨て). This is the term for a situation in which you call someone without any suffix at all. Just the surname: “Tanaka!”, just the given name: “Haruka!”. Literally: “to call and discard (the suffix)”. For the hero of a shōnen anime this is the normal way of communicating with the team. In real Japanese life – a gesture that is at least risky.

Yobisute can be an expression of particular closeness: partners, closest friends, buddies from high school who have gone through every possible humiliation and success together. But just as well it can be a tool of pure domination: a coach yelling at a player, a boss who treats a subordinate like a rank-and-file soldier from the barracks of the 1930s. That is why Japanese people let someone into the space where yobisute is allowed with great caution. And that is also why so much is forgiven to the foreigner who starts with “Hiroshi!” and “Yuki!” – because everyone knows that the outsider cannot see the minefield onto which he has just stepped.

In a world where we have grown used to thinking of the given name as the most basic label of a human being, Japanese everyday life offers the opposite. First you are “Suzuki-san”, “sensei”, “buchō”, “otōsan”. The given name – if one ever gets that far – is more like a reward for crossing many invisible thresholds of trust. And every little suffix, every prefix, every absence of “you” is not a trivial grammatical detail, but an elaborate system that repeats endlessly the same mantra: “You are not alone. You are always IN RELATION to someone.”

Dlaczego w Japonii rzadko woła się ludzi po imieniu? Artykuł o nazwiskach, -san, sensei, firmowych tytułach i tym, jak język odsłania hierarchię relacji.

Where did this come from? Let us return to feudal Japan

Today’s “Suzuki-san” and “Tanaka-san” sound gentle, ordinary, but behind them stand hundreds of years in which given names and surnames were weapons, privileges and tools of power. The fact that Japanese people are still so cautious with using given names is not a quirk of modern times, but an echo of an old feudal order.

The Given Name as Something Dangerous and Private

In earlier Japan, what we today call a “surname” was something far more complex. We have three key words: uji (氏), sei (姓) and myōji (苗字).

氏 – Uji is the lineage, the clan – a great line to which you formally belonged. Fujiwara, Minamoto, Taira… We know these names from history textbooks (or from ukiyo-japan.pl!). They were not “surnames” in our sense, but something like a broad genealogical tree, a network of ancestors and political ties.

姓 – Sei in turn is a “surname” in a very specific, ancient sense: a hereditary title granted by the court, by the emperor – something like a coat of arms plus a seal of recognition. In documents you can therefore encounter forms such as Minamoto no Ason, Taira no Ason – uji + sei as a formal signature.

Only myōji (苗字) is what begins to resemble our surname – the name of a particular line, household, often derived from a place (“this corner of the valley”, “that village by the river”) or a local epithet. In practice, a samurai could “have” uji, sei and myōji – at the same time bearing the emblem of his clan, the title granted by the ruler, and the name of his landed estate.

On top of this came another layer: personal names, and not just one. Over the course of his life, a samurai went through a series of name transformations.

As a child he had his yōmyō (幼名) – a childhood name, often ending in -maru, like the characters in tales: Tokimaru. At adolescence, during the genpuku coming-of-age ceremony, he abandoned this name and received an adult one, often containing a character of “good fortune” or a syllable gifted by his lord – a subtle but important gesture of dependence.

Later, if he entered the monastic state, he would take a religious name. After death he received an okurina – a posthumous name under which he was recorded in the temple registers. One person, several official “selves”, each assigned to a different stage, a different role, a different symbolic order.

In all of this, the most delicate was imina (諱) – the “naked name”, the personal name that theoretically defined the person, but which… people tried not to use. The name was not uttered lightly, publicly, in everyday conversation. In many cases, it was known only to superiors, family, those closest. In texts, it appeared in highly official situations, or even only after death, when the risk of wounding someone’s honor in life was gone.

In the background lies a very old fear, not only Japanese: knowledge of a true name gives power over a person. If you call someone by their true name, you “grasp” them directly. That is why the name was something private, somewhat dangerous. Everyday life was held together by other layers: clan, household, function.

Only the lord may call you by name

In such a world, who addresses you and how is not a matter of style, but of power relations. A samurai may speak of himself as “servant” and sign a letter with his full, elaborate name, but that does not mean everyone has the right to call out to him by that name.

There was an unwritten rule: by a bare given name, and without embellishment, you may be called by someone above you. A daimyō, a superior, someone of higher rank. When the lord called, “Masamune!” – with no “-dono”, no “-sama” – he was saying one thing: “I am the one who decides how close I may come, and you have no right to answer me in kind.”

This is the primordial core of what we now call yobisute – addressing someone directly by the bare name. The naked name or surname becomes a bare nape under the hand of power. The one below speaks elegantly, adds titles, honorific suffixes, inflated polite formulas. The one above may strip them away – take them, like a sword from a vassal’s hand.

In the literature of the samurai era we often encounter scenes in which the lord himself decides how he will “name” his man. The granting of a new name – with one character taken from the lord’s own name – was an honor. But at the same time it was also a signal: now I have the right to call you by this name; this is an act of favor, not reciprocity.

We can clearly see here an asymmetrical pattern:
– from top to bottom – the bare name, without honorification, as a pure manifestation of power,
– from bottom to top – expanded titles, full formulas, full ceremony.

Access to someone’s true name was not an obvious right. It was a privilege – something that could be granted or withheld. Today’s caution, the reluctance to use given names in professional relationships, is the shadow of that old inequality. We still somehow feel underneath that a given name “pulls” you too close.

From subjects without surnames to compulsory surnames after Meiji

To complete the picture, we need to add one more layer: the common people outside the warrior class. Samurai, monk, aristocrat – they juggled hanami, uji, sei, myōji and names like fans. And the peasant, craftsman, townsman?

In the Edo period, many peasants in practice had their own myōji, local lineage names used in the village, in informal contexts. But officially – in the eyes of the state – they very often functioned without surnames. In tax registers they were simply Tarō from that village, “farm X”, “household Y”. A surname was a privilege of the higher estates: warriors, court, wealthy townsmen. Subjects were there to work, pay taxes, bear more taxpayers – the individual “face” was secondary, and often downright undesirable.

Only the turn of the nineteenth century, the Meiji era, reversed this logic. The modern nation-state needed citizens with permanent, unambiguous surnames in order to enter them into registers, conscript them into the army, tax them, send their children to school. So a compulsory surname for everyone was introduced. Peasants who for generations had lived as “Saburō from the field by the river” suddenly had to decide: what is our name?

Hence the huge explosion of surnames taken from trees, rivers, hills: Tanaka (middle of the field), Yamada (mountain fields), Kawasaki (river + cape) – all these names are nothing more than ordinary landscapes to which people now glued their official identity.

But even then, when the surname became compulsory, the logic was very far from Western individualism. At the center there did not stand the “citizen X”, but the household – ie (家). In the register, the unit was the house, the family, the line, at whose head stood the father – the head of the family. The surname therefore said first and foremost: “we belong to this house”, and only later: “I, the individual, am so-and-so.”

Today’s situation, in which the Japanese public space is dominated first by company and department (for example: Sharp Display, Sales), then by position (for example: general manager), then by surname: “SATŌ”, and only in small letters somewhere below the given name: “Tarō” – is a straightforward continuation of this history. First the clan, the house, the company, the role; only then the single person with a name that in many contexts still feels too intimate, too “naked” to simply throw into the crowd.

Dlaczego w Japonii rzadko woła się ludzi po imieniu? Artykuł o nazwiskach, -san, sensei, firmowych tytułach i tym, jak język odsłania hierarchię relacji.

At the Meeting Point of Our Cultures

In the open-plan offices of Tokyo or Osaka, this difference in approach to given names is visible at a glance. For many English-speaking managers, the move from “Mr Smith” to plain “Tom” is one of their favourite rituals of building equality, and it tends to happen almost instantly. In the Anglo-Saxon world it is a symbolic moment: we put titles aside, we are “on a first name basis”, from now on more partners than supplicant and official. In an email you stop writing “Dear Mr Brown”, you begin with “Hi Tom” – and both sides feel they can now focus on getting things done rather than on “empty courtesies”.

If you transfer this gesture to Japan unreflectively, you may accidentally hit a completely different emotional register. For a Japanese person, a given name – especially called out aloud in the office – is not a neutral signal of “hey, we’re so egalitarian”. It is often like walking into someone’s living room with your shoes on. His entire linguistic biography says: the given name belongs to the sphere of home, childhood, closest friends. In primary school they called him “Hiro”, in high school “Takashi-kun”, at home he is still “Taku-chan”. At work – from the very first day – he is “Sasaki-san”. If suddenly someone from the West starts calling across the open space, “Hiroshi, could you check this?”, for him it does not necessarily mean a nice “we’ve switched to a more relaxed tone”.

Research by Akiko Okamura (a linguist at Takasaki City University of Economics who works on intercultural pragmatics) into forms of address in Japanese offices shows that in practice it is precisely this tension that leads to interesting compromises. A European who comes to work in a Tokyo branch of a company very quickly realises that no one calls each other “Kenji” or “Yuko”. Everyone is Tanaka-san, Suzuki-san, Yamada-san. And what does he do? Contrary to his habits, he adopts the local norm.

The boss from the US or the UK starts saying:

“Tanaka-san, could you send me the report?”
“Suzuki-san, what do you think about this client?”

No “Mr”, no given name – exactly as the Japanese do. Okamura showed that most English-speaking employees in Japan consciously or intuitively choose precisely this model: surname + -san as a safe, locally correct form. Only in relationships with Japanese colleagues who know English very well, have studied abroad and themselves like Western communication styles, does some leeway for first names appear: “Keiko, can you join the call?” – but that is more the exception than the rule.

On the other hand, those same Japanese very readily use the “given name + san” form with foreigners. For them it is the perfect compromise: on the one hand they respect the Western custom of calling by given name, on the other they do not let go of their beloved polite suffix. That is why you hear in the corridor:

“John-san, konnichiwa.”
“Mihau-san, kyō wa isogashii desu ka?”

For a native speaker it sounds exotic, sometimes charming, never offensive. From his perspective, “Tom-san” is simply the Japanese version of “Tom”, a tiny difference. But for a Japanese person the reverse situation – suddenly being “Hiroshi” in the open space – is a jump several floors down, straight into a sphere where until now he had let in only family and closest friends. Hence the characteristic asymmetry: for him you are John-san, but he must remain Tanaka-san to you. Two systems at once, intricately glued together so that no one loses face.

You can read this as an example of mutual accommodation. The Western side gives up the automatic “call me Tom”, adopting the Japanese surname + -san as a tool for building respect and calm in the team. The Japanese side moves in the opposite direction: it agrees to first names with the foreigner, but wraps them in its -san, like in a thin sheet of furoshiki cloth. Inside this linguistic origami there is no longer a simple “equality vs hierarchy”. There is rather a delicate game: how to speak so that the other side feels at home.

But even where only the given name appears on a business card, the Japanese hierarchy is still at work in the background. In emails, the verb forms will still climb the ladder of politeness; in meetings, someone will still sit closer to the door, someone closer to the screen, someone will be taking notes. The scenery changes, but the deep intuition does not disappear – that a relationship is never entirely symmetrical.

On top of this there is one more “false guide” that thoroughly confuses foreigners: anime and pop culture. In series and manga we hear cascades of “-kun”, “-chan”, dramatic shifts to yobisute (“he finally called her without a suffix!”), ostentatious “sensei!” in the school corridor. It is a great narrative shortcut – thanks to a single suffix we immediately know who likes whom, who despises whom, who is attracted to whom. But if we try to transfer this model directly into a real company, we quickly discover that it is the language of emotional dramaturgy, not of authentic interactions. In the office, “Yumi-chan” from anime is usually “Satō-san”, and the dramatic “Tōru!” without a suffix is replaced by a calm “Yamada-san, yoroshiku onegai shimasu”.

Finally, it is worth looking at the dispute over… the order of given name and surname in English, which surfaces in the media from time to time. The Japanese authorities have officially begun to promote the notation “Abe Shinzō” instead of “Shinzō Abe” – that is, surname first, then given name, as in Japanese. This is of course a stylistic matter, but also a symbolic one. In a world where Chinese and Korean surnames tend to remain in their “native” order, Japan for many decades agreed to having its names “reversed” to fit the Western pattern. The change of direction – the request to say “Abe Shinzō” just as we say “Moon Jae-in” or “Xi Jinping” – is a small manifesto of sovereignty: if we meet on the global stage, let us also respect our way of arranging words.

And beneath this decision, the motif we already know so well still resounds: the surname in first place. First the lineage, line, house, the name that carries the family, the town, the history. Only then the given name – that which is private, changeable, intimate. The entire Japanese way of addressing and speaking about oneself – from the daimyō calling his samurai by name, through the nameless peasants of Edo times, to today’s Tanaka-san in the open space – can be read as an unending negotiation of this proportion. How much space to give the individual, how much to reserve for the clan, the company, the role.

Perhaps that is why, for a foreigner who has learned in Japan to say “Suzuki-san” instead of “Yuki”, the return to his own culture can feel strangely tangible. Suddenly the words “Michał”, “Kasia”, “Adam” sound somehow louder, more intense…

Dlaczego w Japonii rzadko woła się ludzi po imieniu? Artykuł o nazwiskach, -san, sensei, firmowych tytułach i tym, jak język odsłania hierarchię relacji.

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