Japanese name suffixes (was Re: Moi, le Kou)

-----Original Message-----
From: E-Ching Ng <e-ching.ng@...>
To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU <CONLANG@...>
Date: Saturday, January 13, 2001 4:17 AM
Subject: Re: Moi, le Kou (was: verbs = nouns?)


>Sounds like -chan is a friendly suffix used by female speakers?
Interesting!  Responding to someone's question earlier, -kun according to my
1963 textbook is a familiar suffix attached to men's and boys' names.  (This
textbook also says that -chan is an honorific suffix added to children's
given names, but clearly that doesn't quite fit - Dagu-chan is not a child.
I guess the language changed since 1963.)
>
>I didn't know that -dono could be a name suffix.  Would be interested in
hearing what it means.

<wry g>  Yeah, my 1960's German grammar has a bunch of the older spellings
so when I hit class, I'd already learned the older forms of some words.

I heard/saw -dono in Rurouni Kenshin, which is a quasihistorical anime (the
laws of physics tend to get broken with increasing frequency in fight
scenes) set during the Meiji Restoration, so maybe it's an archaic or dying
form.

YHL