38. and 256. "What", and "What is your name?"

Japanese often doesn't translate directly to English, and so it's impossible to do this list one phrase at a time without covering some other stuff like particles. For example, the phrase "What is your name?" can't be translated word for word. To say this phrase rather informally would be:

「お名前は？」 (o namae wa?)

To break that down a little, the word 名前 (なまえ - namae) means name.

The prefix お (o) is used to be respectful to a person or object. Some examples: お母さん (おかあさん - okaasan) meaning mother; お弁当 (おべんとお - obentou), bento, a boxed lunch; and お茶 (おちゃ - ocha) meaning tea. Because it's a sign of respect, it would be a little wanky to use it for yourself, so when talking about your own name, you'd use 名前 and not お名前.

Last and most difficult to properly explain is は, which is the topic particle. Though it is written は which would usually be pronounced "ha", it's special and you say it "wa". Now whatever this particle is placed on the end of is the topic of the sentence. This is not necessarily the subject of the sentence, although it often can be. I don't know how to explain exactly what the topic is, but the way I learned to use the は particle is to treat is as meaning "as for X ...".

So 「お名前は？」 means "As for name?", which is an informal way of asking for someone's name.

So what if you want to be a little more polite? Well then you might say:

「お名前は何ですか？」 (onamae wa nan desu ka?)

So we've added three new parts. The です is the state-of-being covered in my last post. Loosely translated as "is".

The word before that, 何 (なん・なに) can be read either as "nan" or "nani" and I am really not qualified to say when you use which, so stick to trusted examples. Regardless, it means "what".

Finally we have か (ka) which is the question particle. It is placed at the end of a statement to turn it into a question.

So 「お名前は何ですか？」 means "As for name, what is it?". This is a more polite way to ask someone's name.

You might notice that none of there phrases directly refer to "you", despite them asking for "your" name. It's not always necessary in Japanese to supply pronouns in this case as the context usually makes clear what you're asking for. Personal pronouns do exist though and I'll get to them later.

Next time, I'll write about how to answer this question and give your name.

One last note on the use of です versus だ. All politeness aside, I'm led to believe you can only use だ at the end of a sentence. So in order to say "it is a cat", it is correct to say either:

「猫です」 (neko desu)
「猫だ」 (neko da)

However, to ask "Is it a cat?", it is only correct to say:

「猫ですか？」 (neko desu ka?)

It would be wrong to say "da ka", as だ should always come at the end.

I'm sure there's more nuance to that that I'm not aware of, but this is something I have read.

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