-san

See also Appendix:Variations of "san"

English

Etymology

From Japanese さん (san)

Suffix

-san

1. Honorific ending used to indicate a person is Japanese or talking with Japanese, or treated like Japanese.

   TIME, August 1, 1983:

   Tanaka-San’s Decline and Rise

   Wall Street Journal, December 16, 2008 [1]

   Barack Obama-san

   WalletPop, January 31, 2009 [2]

   Obama-san! President's book of speeches is a huge hit in Japan

Translations

Japanese honorific ending

Chinese: Mandarin: 桑 (cmn) (sāng) French: -san (fr)

Korean: 상 (ko) (sang)

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Irish

Alternative forms

• -sean (slender form)

Pronunciation

• IPA: [sˠən̪ˠ]

Suffix

-san

1. -self (emphatic)

Usage notes

• Added to nouns in the presence of the possessive adjective to emphasize the possessor rather than the thing possessed:

  a gcarrsan -- their car

  a madrasan -- their dog

• Added to prepositional pronouns (ending in a broad consonant) to add emphasis (not to create a reflexive pronoun):
  • Used with third-person plural (except with slender forms such as dóibh; e.g., acusan, orthusan, etc.).
• Added to verbs to indicate "themselves":

  chualadarsan -- they (themselves) heard (Munster Irish only)

Related terms

• -na
• -sa

See also

• féin
• iadsan, siadsan

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Japanese

Etymology 1

From -sama (様)

Suffix

-san (hiragana さん)

1. An honorific ending for names that indicates politeness. The Japanese equivalent of Mr. or Mrs.

Related terms

• -kun
• -sama

Etymology 2

From Chinese 山

Suffix

-san (hiragana さん)

1. 山: mount, mountain

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Scottish Gaelic

Suffix

-san

1. -self, -selves (emphatic)

Usage notes

• Added to prepositional pronouns to add emphasis (not to create a reflexive pronoun).
• Used in third-person singular masculine (eg aigesan).
• Used in third-person plural (eg orrasan).
• When the last letter of the prepositional pronoun is s, a hyphen is put before the suffix (eg leis-san).

See also

• -e
• -sa
• -se