Nice To Meet You!

It All Starts With はじめまして

This lesson is all about meeting someone for the first time in Japan, and that begins with a name exchange. Now, if you put “Japan” and “name” in the same sentence you’re going to need to talk about honorifics. In English, honorifics are the thing you see appended to peoples’ names to show their title—such as “Mr. or “Prof.”—but in Japanese society it’s a bit more complex as they’re much more common in regular speech. Honorific suffixes are an extremely complex structure and diving into that topic this early on would exert a lot of effort for little payoff. To keep things simple you’re going to learn one all encompassing suffix that will work perfectly well for now.

Vocabulary

Kanji	Kana	English
(お) 名前	(お) なまえ	Name
初めまして	はじめまして	Nice to meet you
宜しくお願いします	よろしくおねがいします	Please treat me well
〜と言います	〜といいます	My name is…

Honorifics

The most common suffix you will hear is 〜さん. It’s probably the suffix you should attach to everyone’s name if you’re unsure which to use (which is why we’re learning it). Now, remember how I said that in Japanese, suffixes are more complex than in English? That’s because unlike in English where we generally only use honorifics at very specific times, Japanese people will use them daily and to a much higher degree. Talking to a younger sibling? Honorific. Mom and Dad? Honorific. Stranger on the street? Honorific. Teacher? Obviously an honorific! Unless you’re extremely comfortable with the person you’re talking to and you’re on a first name basis (much more uncommon in Japan) you should be appending an honorific. With that said, for the sake of this lesson, just add 〜さん to the end of people’s names and you’ll be set! We will go over more complex usages of honorifics at a later time, but if you just can’t wait here’s a wonderful explanation that should tide you over till then.

My Name Is…

With that little explanation of honorifics out of the way, it’s about time you learned to tell people who you are! There’s a lot of different ways to tell someone your name; and at many different levels of formality to boot! We’re going to shoot for a phrasing that is formally dead center to get you started. If you want to tell someone your name, all you need to do is say MYNAMEといいます. With this, you’re saying “I’m MYNAME.”

Side Note: Remember honorifics from three paragraphs ago? It’s important to mention that you should NEVER add honorifics to your own name. For example, don’t say MYNAMEさんといいます. It comes off very high horsey. Think back to any time you’ve heard someone say “excuse me, it’s ‘Mr. B’ to you” and you’ll get the idea.

What Is Your Name?

Now, you know how to say your name, but how do you ask someone for theirs? As with saying your own name there’s a lot of ways to ask someone what their name is, but we’re going to stick with a simple one you can use virtually anywhere: おなまえは. Really quickly let’s break down that sentence since it’s a bit different than anything else you’ve seen up to this point.

おなまえ means name, and adding お at the beginning adds extra politeness since you’re asking someone for their personal information. The last bit is just your favorite particle: は. Remember a few lessons back when you learned that in Japanese people will oftentimes cut off extra bits of sentence if they don’t feel that it adds anything to the conversation? This is one of those times. If you end a sentence with は, you’re basically inviting the person you’re talking to to finish the sentence for you. Just make sure that you express the sentence verbally in a way that makes it obvious you’re asking a question.

Side note: It would be a little bit odd if you started by asking someone for their name when you haven’t introduced yourself first. Make sure you put yourself out there before inviting someone to share their information with you.

Nice To Meet You

Let’s tie up the loose ends of this make-believe conversation you’re learning to string together. The next two phrases are extremely important as they act as the bread of a conversation sandwich when you’re meeting someone. はじめまして is linguistically tricky but easy to use in practice (here at Katsukats we’re all about that!) It’s a phrase that isn’t really directly translatable to any English-spoken situation but is used in a similar fashion to “Nice to meet you” and is said right when you meet someone. よろしくおねがいします is also hard to translate as it literally means “treat me well” or “thanks in advance” but you can think of it as another way to say “nice to meet you”. As long as you’re aware of when to say these phrases, knowing the exact nuances of their meaning isn’t important right now.

Example

Kanji	Kana	English
A: はじめまして、テイラーです。おなまえは？	A. ＊初めまして、テイラーです。お名前は？	Nice to meet you, I’m Taylor. What is your name?
B: はじめまして、わたしはケイトです。よろしくおねがいします。	B: ＊初めまして、私はケイトです。よろしくお願いします。	I’m Kate. Pleased to make your acquaintance.
A: （こちらこそ）よろしくおねがいします。	A: （こちらこそ）よろしくお願いします。	I’m pleased as well.

Side Note: The こちらこそ bit right there means “likewise” in English, and it’s something you can add to be more formal, but it’s not a crime to drop it out—it’s done all the time in Japanese!

As you can see, the conversation opened up with person A stating the phrase はじめまして and giving their name, they then asked person B for their name. Person B reciprocates the はじめまして phrase and then gives their name followed by the phrase よろしくおねがいします. Finally, person A comes back with a slightly altered variant of よろしくおねがいします. To finish that part of the conversation. Introductions are done! See, that wasn’t so bad.

BEFORE MOVING ON…

Before moving on from this lesson you need to understand what an honorific suffix is and how to append one to the end of someone’s name, how to tell someone your name and ask that someone theirs, and finally how to work はじめまして and よろしくおねがいします into conversation.