Japanese names

In Japan people are addressed by their last names rather than their first. In addition, the ending -san is added after the name; for example, Tanaka-san. The ending -chan would refer to a young girl and -kun to a young boy. The ending -sama is a particularly polite ending. You never use -san or -sama when you are naming yourself, though.

There are probably around 120,000 different surnames of which Tanaka, Kimura, Sato, Shimizu, Suzuki, Watanabe and Yamanda are the most common. Boy's names often end in -hiko, -o or -to and girls' names often end in -ko.