Japanese Honorifics Chart: -san, -sama, -kun, -chan, and Beyond

Table of contents

Who this guide is for

• Foreigners new to a Japanese workplace who can read -san and -sama but freeze when a Slack tag or email salutation looks ambiguous.
• Learners with a Japanese partner or in-laws navigating the gap between casual family use and formal address with extended family.
• Anime / manga readers who keep encountering -dono, -tan, -chama, and want to know which suffixes survive contact with reality.
• HR managers and team leads with non-native team members who keep asking why their honorific choices feel slightly off.

This is a reference article. Read the chart, then skim down to the section that matches your situation.

Japanese honorifics, in one paragraph

A Japanese honorific is a suffix attached to a name (-san, -sama) or a prefix attached to a noun (o-, go-) that signals respect, familiarity, or social distance. The right choice depends on the listener’s role, your relationship, and whether you’re speaking inside or outside your group. Most adults use four or five suffixes in daily life. The rest are situational — workplace titles, formal letters, or fictional flavor.

The single-glance chart — 12 honorifics on one page

Save or screenshot this chart. The rest of the article unpacks each row.

Two more prefixes show up everywhere but aren’t suffixes:

For the verb-form side of politeness — the sonkeigo / kenjougo / teineigo distinction — see the keigo guide.

How honorifics fit into the A/B/C politeness framework

Across this site we use a three-tier model for register. Honorifics map onto it cleanly, which is why mismatching them feels wrong even when each piece is technically correct.

Key principle: match the verb register and the suffix register. If you write Tanaka-sama in the address line but then close with okuru ne yoroshiku, you’ve signaled disrespect by accident. Native readers notice the mismatch before they notice the content.

For the full sonkeigo / kenjougo split, see the keigo guide A/B/C breakdown.

The five suffixes you need to master

The chart above lists 12, but in daily life adults use five. Learn these and you’ll be correct 95% of the time.

-san — the universal default

If you can’t decide, use -san. It works for adults of any gender, on a first or last name, in speech or writing, with internal or external contacts. The only safe places it doesn’t reach are children (use -chan / -kun), customers in formal writing (use -sama), and your own family members when speaking about them to outsiders (drop the suffix).

You will never offend anyone by adding -san. You will frequently offend by leaving it off.

-sama — the formality ceiling

-sama is for customers, executives, and the addressee line of formal letters and email. You hear it in three settings:

• Customer service. Shop staff, hotel staff, and call centers say Yamada-sama when addressing a customer.
• Formal writing. Email salutations to clients use -sama on the addressee’s name.
• Honorific compounds. Set phrases like o-kyaku-sama (お客様, customer) and kami-sama (神様, god) embed -sama permanently.

Using -sama on a peer reads as sarcasm. Using -sama on your own boss reads as ignorant of uchi-soto (more on that below).

-kun and -chan — the casual axis

These two carry the same register weight but split by familiarity and gender pattern:

• -kun historically attaches to younger males — junior colleagues, male classmates. In modern workplaces, some senior women use -kun with junior staff of any gender, but the default in most teams is to use -kun with younger men and -san with everyone else.
• -chan is affectionate. It’s used with children, close female friends, family members, and pets. Outside those circles it reads as condescending — never use -chan on an adult colleague unless you have years of relationship.

The single mistake most non-natives make here is using -kun or -chan upward. -kun downward from a senior is fine. -kun upward from a junior is not.

-sensei — profession + honorific in one

-sensei attaches to teachers, doctors, lawyers, authors, and politicians. It does triple duty: it’s a title, an honorific, and a form of address that can stand alone (Sensei, shitsumon ga arimasu — “Sensei, I have a question,” without a name).

You don’t combine -sensei with -san. Saitō-sensei is correct; Saitō-sensei-san sounds like you’re stuttering through unfamiliar etiquette.

-senpai — the vertical hierarchy

-senpai marks someone above you in a shared institution — school, club, company, training cohort. It can attach to a name (Watanabe-senpai) or stand alone (Senpai, sugoi desu).

It’s a -san-tier suffix in formality (3/5), but it carries a relationship marker that -san doesn’t. Calling someone -senpai tells them you recognize the seniority structure.

Six confusion pairs, side by side

These are the comparisons non-natives ask most often. One row, one rule of thumb, one mistake to avoid.

The workplace 4-axis decision matrix

Most honorific dilemmas at work resolve once you check four axes:

1. Speaker: what’s your role relative to the listener?
2. Listener: what’s their role relative to you?
3. Third party present? Is a client, senior, or outsider in the conversation or copy line?
4. Channel: spoken, email, Slack, formal letter?

Six representative scenarios cover most of what comes up.

The uchi-soto trap is the single most expensive mistake. Adding -san to your own boss in front of a client signals you don’t yet understand who counts as inside your group right now.

When you can drop the honorific (yobisute)

Yobisute (呼び捨て) means calling someone by their bare name with no suffix. Three conditions where it’s safe, and three where it’s not.

Safe to drop (any one is sufficient):

1. Family and spouse. You call your husband Kenji, not Kenji-san, in private.
2. Lifelong friends from school. Bare last name is the standard when you grew up together.
3. Speaking about your in-group to an outsider. You drop -san on your colleagues when talking to a client.

Never drop (any one is sufficient):

1. Direct address to a senior. Bare Tanaka to your boss is rude.
2. In a formal channel. Email salutations, official letters, and meeting minutes always carry a suffix.
3. In front of a customer. Even with peers, switch back to -san when a customer is in earshot or on the call.

If you over-drop: the one-line recovery is Yobisute shite shimaimashite, shitsurei itashimashita (呼び捨てしてしまいまして、失礼いたしました — “I apologize for dropping the honorific”). Then use -san for the rest of the conversation. See keigo mistakes for severity tiers.

Anime vs real life — the honorific heat map

Many readers land here from anime. Here’s how each suffix performs in the wild vs. on screen, on a 1–5 scale.

Three red flags before you copy a suffix from anime:

• If it ends in -dono, -chama, -bō, or vocative -kōhai, assume it’s fictional flavor.
• If it’s used by a samurai, a magical character, or an over-the-top butler, assume the same.
• If your real-life Japanese friend laughs when you try it, treat that as data.

Honorifics in the digital workplace

Modern Japanese workplaces have moved most communication into Slack, Teams, GitHub, and Zoom. The honorific rules adjust slightly.

Email signatures and salutations

Email salutations use -sama for clients and -san for internal recipients. Group emails use kakui (各位) for “all addressees” or list names individually with -sama. See how to write a Japanese business email for the full salutation and signature breakdown.

Slack / Teams mentions

Slack handles usually don’t include honorifics — @Tanaka or @tanaka is standard. The honorific appears in the message text:

• @Tanaka-san, kakunin onegai shimasu. (B-tier polite — default)
• @Tanaka-san, kakunin itadakemasu deshōka. (A-tier keigo — for cross-team or senior recipients)

Customizing your own handle to include -san is self-honorification — avoid it.

Zoom / Meet / Teams display names

Set your display name to LastName FirstName or FirstName LastName without a suffix. Other people will tag you with -san when they speak; you don’t need to do it on your own row.

GitHub and LinkedIn profile names

Use your romanized name without a suffix. When commenting on a PR or issue in Japanese, write @Tanaka-san in the comment body — the GitHub @ tag uses the handle, the in-text -san comes from your prose.

Five mistakes non-natives make most often

For full mistake severity (Tier 1–3 model with recovery moves), see keigo mistakes.

How honorific suffixes connect to verb-form keigo

Honorific suffixes are half of politeness; the other half is the verb form. Tanaka-sama in the address line followed by kakunin shite ne in the body is a register collision — the suffix says “high formality, formal letter,” and the verb says “casual chat with a friend.” Native readers catch the mismatch instantly.

The other way around is equally costly. Otsukaresama deshita with no honorific on the listener’s name reads as careless rather than warm.

The fix is to match register on both axes at once. For the verb side, see the keigo guide, the keigo cheat sheet, and keigo examples for full dialogues where suffix and verb stay in sync.

Frequently asked questions

What’s the line between -san and -sama?

-san is the universal adult default. -sama is the formality ceiling — customer service, executives, formal letter salutations. If your English brain would reach for “Mr./Ms.,” use -san. If you’d reach for “Dear esteemed customer,” use -sama. Using -sama on a peer reads as sarcastic. Using -san on a customer in a formal letter reads as careless.

Do I add -san to a foreign name like John?

Yes, in Japanese conversation and writing. John-san is correct and expected. The honorific attaches to the name in the language being spoken, not the language of the name’s origin. The one exception is bilingual email signatures and Slack handles, where mixing English and -san can read as redundant — but in the body of a Japanese message, keep the honorific.

How do I refer to my boss when speaking with a client?

Drop the honorific on your own boss. The uchi-soto rule treats your team as one in-group when an outsider is present. Say Tanaka ga moushiagemashita — no -san, no -sama. Adding -san to your own boss in front of a client tells the client you don’t yet understand who’s in your group.

Should my Slack handle include an honorific?

Usually no. The honorific belongs in the message text, not your handle. @Tanaka or @tanaka is standard for handles; others will add -san when they tag you. Customizing your own handle to include -san reads as self-honorification.

I heard -dono in anime — can I use it in real life?

Almost never. -dono survives in legal documents, internal HR mail at some traditional companies, and martial arts settings. In daily speech, Slack, or normal business email, -dono will sound theatrical. Default to -sama for the highest formality and -san for everyday use.

Related guides

• Keigo guide — the A/B/C politeness framework — pillar article on verb-form keigo.
• Keigo cheat sheet — lookup tables for sonkeigo / kenjougo / teineigo.
• Keigo examples — full dialogues with annotated suffixes and verb forms.
• Keigo mistakes — Tier 1/2/3 severity model with recovery moves.
• Best way to learn keigo — 90-day, 3-stage roadmap.
• Polite Japanese phrases for the office — daily-office phrases with honorifics in context.
• How to write a Japanese business email — email salutations and signature conventions.

Get the Essential 30 PDF

If you want the 30 highest-leverage Japanese business phrases — keigo verbs and honorific suffixes — in a single printable reference, get the Essential 30 PDF on Gumroad. One purchase, lifetime updates, A/B/C politeness levels annotated on every entry.