My English name is Jonathan, so naturally my Japanese name as taught to me in my very first Japanese course is ジョナサン. However, over the years, I have had multiple (native speaking) teachers express difficulty when I introduce myself as ジョナサン and they then proceed to refer to me as ジョナサンさん, almost as if the double “san” is a tongue twister for them. In some cases, teachers have even insisted I shorten my name to ジョナさん or ジョンさん. I’m just curious if anyone knows why this is a common occurrence with my name 🙂
While I do respect my name might not be the most natural to translate, I do find it funny that there is even a Japanese restaurant chain called ジョナサン yet I still seem to have issues going by that name 😝
However, please know I don’t bring this up as a criticism or a complaint. I’m just honestly curious and would love to understand linguistically why my name sometimes presents an issue for native speakers 🙂 ありがとうございます！
10 comments
It might be anecdotal, but it seems we abbreviate the names of coworkers at my company to one or two syllables.
Japanese has a pseudo-rule against having the same sound in rapid succession. When that happens, the first is usually dropped and replaced with a っ。
For instance, if you were Mike, people would say Maiku-san but would have trouble with Maiku-kun. They would instinctively make it Maikkun instead.
In your case, their brain wants to make it Jonassan or similar already. Suggesting Jonsan makes the mental weirdness go away without butchering it.
Even though this is mostly for single repeat syllables from the same kana row, the ん isn’t really enough to “separate” them. So the effect is the same.
Classmates name was Nathan (ねさん) and he purposely changed his spelling to ネーサン because of its link to お姉さん and Japanese people loved it and it was easy to say.
The San san is repeative and a bit annoying to say… Especially if your name is already so many mora long (exhausting!) others have pointed it out in replies, so I won’t talk about it.. Just interesting to see the San endings of names
You should give them a copy of Rollerball from 1975
What if you were to introduce yourself as ジョナタン？
ジョナサンさん is by no means hard to say or a tongue-twister. But there is a strong tendency to shorten names to a couple of syllables, and it your teachers make a difficult face at times, they’re probably just wondering what, if anything, they can shorten it to. The same thing will go through their (or any culturally Japanese person/’s) head when hearing, for example, a long Indonesian name. If a name ends in SAN it’s a little extra tempting to settle on a suitable nickname. Not because it’s hard to say, but it just doesn’t roll off the tongue or sound friendly (It sounds なじみがない, for lack of a better expression). I mean, if you were, say an executive in your 50s traveling on business, and seemed like a formal guy, I am sure people would just call you ジョナサンさん without second guessing it. *And with all due respect to the other poster, there is absolutely no tendency to shorten it to Jonassan, unless your name is Jonasu.
I’m a fellow Jonathan and have never come across people having issue with my name in Japan. If anything there’s a little humorous “あ、ジョナサンさん”, or people shortening my name to ジョナ or the cute ジョナちゃん. Nothing odd.
Let’s be honest you just gotta start introducing yourself as ジョジョ and no one will have trouble though they may think your name as quite bizarre.
Very new to learning Japanese but enjoying it so far. Could someone tell me what my Japanese name would be given that my English name is Conor?
if your name is Fernández and say フェルナンデスです over the phone there is a 90% chance you will be registered as only フェルナン