Japanese “-chan” and Turkish “-can”?

Ahmetcan means “dear Ahmet” or “little Ahmet” in Turkish.
It’s similar to how “-chan” is the honorific for close friends or lovers (mostly for girls). Example: Sakura-chan might mean “little Sakura.”

8 comments
  1. Also, since it hasn’t been said, I just want to note that “chan” comes from “san”, which comes from “sama”.

  2. Japanese “-chan” doesn’t literally mean little though, they’re just both used as terms of endearment. I imagine the Turkish “-can” is similar to the Greek “-aki”, where you can attach it to someone’s name to imply endearment, but you can also attach it to any noun just to imply a small size without any particular sense of affection. So in Greek, the noun trapezi (table) can become trapezaki if it’s small, but in Japanese you can’t say テーブルちゃん unless you’re Nina from Code Geass.

Leave a Reply
You May Also Like