How Japanese call their partners

Note: Tofugu wrote a nice article on this survey.

Correctly-addressing even close friends in Japanese is a matter of some complexity that I won’t attempt to explain here. However, iShare recently tackled the subject of names partners use with each other as you can see here.

Demographics

Between the 20th and 26th of November 2009 484 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 59.7% were male, 33.3% in their twenties, 32.2% in their thirties, and 34.5% in their forties.

One that I was suprised and disappointed didn’t have a category of its own was calling your wife “mother”. Many Japanese seem to adopt this as soon as they have a kid, so I’d have liked to have had concrete data on this.

The most popular kinds of mildly-embarrassing nicknames were adding “-tan” or “-nyan” after names.

We don’t bother with suffixes or nicknames in this house, and adding “-chan” after names usually indicates a request for something is coming soon…

Research results

Q1A: Have you ever had a girlfriend? (Sample size=289, male)

	All	Twenties N=105	Thirties N=91	Forties N=93
Yes (to SQs)	76.8%	59.0%	87.9%	86.0%
No	23.2%	41.0%	12.1%	14.0%

Q1B: Have you ever had a boyfriend? (Sample size=195, female)

	All	Twenties N=56	Thirties N=65	Forties N=74
Yes (to SQs)	82.6%	64.3%	89.2%	90.5%
No	17.4%	35.7%	10.8%	9.5%

Q1SQ1: How do you most often refer to your partner? (Sample size=383)

	All	Male N=222	Female N=161
Given name only	29.8%	36.0%	21.1%
Given name plus chan, kun	27.2%	24.8%	30.4%
Nickname	21.9%	21.2%	23.0%
Given name plus san	8.4%	7.7%	9.3%
Family name plus san	3.9%	2.7%	5.6%
Oy, Hey, etc (don’t use name)	3.7%	3.2%	4.3%
Family name only	2.3%	1.8%	3.1%
You (don’t use name)	1.3%	0.5%	2.5%
Other	1.6%	2.3%	0.6%

Q1SQ2: How does your partner most often refer to you? (Sample size=383)

	All	Male N=222	Female N=161
Given name plus chan, kun	31.3%	34.7%	26.7%
Given name only	24.3%	17.1%	34.2%
Nickname	20.9%	23.4%	17.4%
Given name plus san	13.6%	15.8%	10.6%
Family name plus san	3.7%	5.0%	1.9%
Oy, Hey, etc (doesn’t use name)	2.6%	2.7%	2.5%
Family name only	1.8%	0.0%	4.3%
You (doesn’t use name)	0.8%	0.5%	1.2%
Other	1.0%	0.9%	1.2%

Q1SQ3: Do, did you have a special nickname for your partner that would be a little embarrassing if others heard? (Sample size=383)

	All	Male N=222	Female N=161
Yes	13.1%	14.4%	11.2%
No	86.9%	85.6%	88.8%

Q2: If you were to be called a name by a partner, which would you most want to be called? (Sample size=484)

	All	Male N=289	Female N=195
Given name only	31.6%	26.3%	39.5%
Given name plus chan, kun	24.2%	27.0%	20.0%
Nickname	15.7%	15.9%	15.4%
Given name plus san	13.0%	15.2%	9.7%
You (doesn’t use name)	3.9%	4.8%	2.6%
Family name plus san	3.3%	3.5%	3.1%
Family name only	2.5%	1.4%	4.1%
Oy, Hey, etc (doesn’t use name)	1.2%	1.7%	0.5%
Other	4.5%	4.2%	5.1%

Q3: If you were to enter a relationship, would you want to change the name you call each other? (Sample size=484)

	All	Male N=289	Female N=195
Want to change soon	11.6%	13.1%	9.2%
Once we got closer, would want to change	37.4%	34.6%	41.5%
Once we got very close, would want to change	10.7%	7.3%	15.9%
Not bothered when we would change	40.3%	45.0%	33.3%