> > 半田さん (Handa-san)

> I don't know any Japanese at all,

Neither I. :-)

> and I wonder: is `-san' a suffix used when speaking of a person informally;
> somewhat like the use of first name (rather than `Mr' or `Ms' and last
> name) in the Western culture?  Or is it part of his name?

Here is what I learned from my Japanese correspondents.

Traditionally (that is, when Japanese do not give into "americanizing"
their name, tss, tss, tss! :-), the family name always come first, followed
by the given name.

You, _when_ you address your correspondent, exclusively use the family name.
The given name is present on business cards or signatures, or when you want
to identify someone while speaking about him/her.  But when addressing your
correspondent directly, the given name is reserved to the close family or
very intimates.  That is, nothing common with the usage we do of the first
name in Western countries.  Japanese are surely tolerant that we use it,
but this is not really the polite way.

Instead, there is the friendly `-san' suffix after the family name, that
corresponds a bit to our usage of the first name, which is the common way
and very acceptable in most circumstances.  If you want to be more formal,
and show greater respect, a bit like we use `Mr.' in English, you use the
`-sama' suffix instead of `-san'.

Notice that the name is written with Kanji characters (ideograms), but the
politeness suffix (like any other kind of grammatical suffix, by the way)
is written with Hiragana characters (phonetic).  The grammatical properties
are written phonetically after the ideograms.  Levels of politeness are
part of the grammar.  There is no correspondence in English, and only a tiny
bit in French (familiar `tu'/ polite `vous' when addressing a single person).

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