The Japanese use a broad array of honorifics for addressing or referring to people with respect. In Japan, these forms of address follow a person's name in the manner of a suffix.
Common honorifics[]
- -san (さん) - the most common honorific and is a title of respect, but never used as a self-reference. Identical to the English "Mr." and "Ms."
- -kun (君,くん) - informal honorific commonly used towards males.
- -chan (ちゃん) - informal honorific commonly used towards females and pets. See the Wikipedia section for more details.
- -senpai (先輩) - honorific used to address senior colleagues. Roughly translates to "master" or "senior".
- kōhai (後輩) - reverse of senpai, used towards juniors, but not used to address.
- -sama (様) - a formal version of -san.
- -sensei (先生) - a teacher, or a professional.
- -shi (氏) - used in formal writing or in very formal speech for referring o someone unfamiliar to the speaker.
- -han (はん) - Kansai dialect equivalent of -san.