If you watch all your anime on crunchyroll or the like, you may never see these in the subtitles, but if you listen to the Japanese being spoken you’ll probably hear a -san or -sama or something along those lines after a character’s name is said. This is going to be a mildly quick and basic write-up on what they mean and when they tend to be used.

This is sort of going to be a mini Japanese lesson. If you like this type of content, let me know and I might do a random basic Japanese lesson to help give some insight on things that are said or happen in anime/light novels/manga/etc.

So what are honorifics? Basically they’re little tags you use to show respect or endearment to the person you’re talking to or about. Pretty simple. Here’s a list of the ones you’ll probably end up hearing if you watch almost any amount of anime.

-San さん



This one is probably the most common honorific out there. It’s basically used to show respect for someone at an equal or higher social status than you. They could be a stranger, a business partner, or almost anyone older than you that doesn’t have a reason to fall into another type of honorific. This will usually be used when speaking with polite language, but not always.

Example (from Clannad):