26 aug discussion thread - Page 16

San (??^?) (sometimes pronounced han (??^?) 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", "Mrs.", or "Ms.", san is almost universally added to a person's name, in both formal and informal contexts. However, in addition to being used with people's names, it is also employed in a variety of other ways.

San is used in combination with workplace nouns, so a bookseller might be addressed or referred to as honya-san ("bookstore" + san), and a butcher as nikuya-san ("butcher shop" + san).

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 also be attached to the names of animals or even inanimate objects. For example, a pet rabbit might be called usagi-san, and fish used for cooking can be referred to as sakana-san. Both uses would be considered childish (akin to "Mr. Rabbit" in English) and would be avoided in formal speech. Even married people often refer to their spouse with san.

Online, Japanese gamers often append a numeral 3 to another player's name to denote san (e.g. Taro3 conveys Taro-san), since the number three, written ? (??, san) in Japanese, is pronounced "san".