This.
Also, some people hate being treated differently than everyone else when they are just trying to fit in and be treated equally. In any case, do you usually call germans “frau XXXX”, or similar for other cultures? Why do it for Japanese?
However, in this regard most Japanese people will treat you differently all the time just because you look different, even if you live in Japan. So you have my permission to keep calling him “-san” and drive him crazy with it. 
-san is sort of like Mr/Mrs, but beyond that it also has a role in informal social hierarchy (which is very much a Thing in Japan). -san means “you and I are roughly on an equal level, socially speaking”. So your “no -san” guy might have been being humble, “oh no, I’m just the new guy so you obviously outrank me” and such.
It could also simply be that he doesn’t want to stand out from your other coworkers and be one of the guys.
But if you’re really curious, why not politely ask the guy ?
In some (southern) German dialects, especially in Austria and Bavaria, the “Surname before Given name” is used as well.
Arnold Schwarzenegger would have been called Schwarzenegger Arnold in his hometown.
I’ve seen something similar, growing up in Florida. I believe this is common throughout the South.
Growing up, I was taught to address adults (other than teachers) as Mr/Miss First Name. So my parents’ friends were Miss Karen, Miss Betty, Mr. John, etc. It seemed a nice way to show respect without being overly formal (Mr/Mrs. Last Name.)
Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as to call it Lovecraftian.
I haven’t been tentacle-raped in months.
My own work environment may be a little more relaxed than some, which is perhaps a reflection of the company’s efforts in globalization. The “-san” suffix is used as a matter of common politeness. “-kun” is occasionally used for male juniors/subordinates, but usually it’s more as a sort of term of endearment, depending on the feel of the person. Work titles are almost always used for senior managers (Director, etc.) and sometimes for middle managers (“Manager so-and-so”, or just “-san”). In my group, we tend to address our boss by her family name and “-san” or by her work title alone (“Director”) when it feels appropriate to acknowledge her position in the context of the conversation. When addressing e-mail to people outside our group, either work-titles or the formal suffix “-sama” is used.
My work colleges call me by my first name, without any suffixes, per my request, but people outside our group tend to assume this is my family name, and add “-san” to the end. People also tend to add “-san”, knowingly, to the end of first (given) names of foreign associates in e-mail exchanges. (It’s also not uncommon to use “-sun” on the end of a given name when distinguishing people who share a family name.
Since I do some educational training as part of my work, some members occasionally call me “sensei”, which sounds and feels odd to me.
As others have suggested, my guess is that the OP’s Mr. No-sankyou just doesn’t want to be treated like a special case.
And fair enough, I say. When not in Rome, et cetera.
Sounds sort of like Don/Doña in Spanish then, except gender-neutral, and used much like Mr./Miss/Mrs. is in the US.
[QUOTE=Not Carlson]
Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as to call it Lovecraftian.
I haven’t been tentacle-raped in months.
[/QUOTE]
You don’t have to sound so disappointed about it !
Interesting. Does Japan have the same “problem” as China ? That is to say, a handful of family names being really, *really *common but you can’t just go around calling strange people by their first name because it is Not Done ; and you have to be able to politely but creatively distinguish the umpteen “Mr. Li” in a given company, club or classroom ?
So you’ve naturally got Foreman Lee, to distinguish from Secretary Li and Computer Guy Li ; but when even that fails you’re down to Old Li, Older Li, Oldest Li, Fat Li, Bald Li, Third Son Li etc…
Nah. Taint so bad as that.
There are several very common names, but even in a fairly large gatherings there are seldom more than a couple of people sharing a name.
People have quite a bit of variance in how comfortable they are assimilating into foreign environments. The first person in that office probably felt a bit uncomfortable omitting a status indicator so stuck with adding “-san” and didn’t mind standing out a bit. The second one probably preferred to fit in more and found being referred to like that a bit patronizing. Both are completely reasonable attitudes.
Japanese workplaces are indeed a suffocating mess of hierarchy and formality.
Much less specific than that; isn’t that often age and accomplishment related?
No. The top three Chinese names are 22.4% of people (although it is regional). The top three Japanese names are 4.23%. Korean and Vietnamese are even less diverse than Chinese.
The “-kun” suffix is used these days on male and female subordinates alike, as well as female students, depending on the class and grade level. The alternatives are “-san”, which implies a social equality that may not exist, or “-chan”, which is also used as a diminutive and endearment and is not generally considered appropriate for a workplace.
Not using any honorifics is called “yobisute”, quasi-literally ‘throwing out what you call people’. When working in Japanese, yobisute is indicative of a relationship in which no formality levels need be applied. The catch is that it’s ambiguous: either it means that you’re such intimate friends that it’s ridiculous to pretend there’s any polite distancing necessary, or it means you think the person you’re talking to is so contemptible that they don’t even deserve token politeness.
(Tangent: Trying to get the implications of yobisute across in English is one of those things that drives localizers out of their minds when translating media like anime and video games, particularly when it’s a plot point. The only place I’ve ever seen it consistently done well is in the Ace Attorney games. Phoenix Wright and Miles Edgeworth (Naruhodou Ryuuichi and Mitsurugi Reiji in the original) speak both of and to each other using surnames only, no suffix, any time they’re not obliged to be formal in court. Wright is an idealistic young defense attorney, and Edgeworth is reputed to be a vicious and corrupt prosecutor, so initially the yobisute comes across as contempt. The interpretation is flipped upside down late in the game when you find out that the two of them were good friends as children, and both kind of secretly think they still are.)
The system of social standing is complicated and so far as I can tell, it runs mainly on a weird sort of intuition that’s impossible to teach in a language-for-businesspersons class. A lot of Japanese people will either ask you not to bother if you’re interacting in English, or just good-naturedly put up with your many and potentially bizarre errors. Sometimes it shakes out into a quaint sort of pidgin. My Japanese instructor in college was [surname]-sensei in writing and in formal conversation, but informally was generally referred to as [given name]-sensei, which sounds odd in the same way as the above example of “Mr. Bob”. When we all aged out of her classes, we started calling her that to her face. She thought it was endearing.
Sort of and not really.
Three of the things that in theory grant the Don are inheritance (oh look, I have a fancy lastname), having a bachillerato (which nowadays is a HS degree) and the kind of job or social standing you have (such as being a doctor, a Roma patriarch or in a management position).
But there’s contexts such as certain legal documents where everybody gets the Don, it’s part of the formula with which mothers et al make a 3yo note that he must come here Last Minute (when you get called with the Don and your full name, you know you’re in hot water and it’s about to boil) and, specially in those areas where compulsory HS means almost everybody would get it it’s mostly fallen into disuse. My team got the Don when we were in Costa Rica, because we were considered equivalent to the local managers and they always were Don Whatever, and man it felt weird!
In an equal relationship you BOTH use -san or you BOTH DON’T. This is a big big big big peeve for me, I’ve been here 25 years, I’m married to a Japanese man, we are all mothers of kids in the same class for goodness sake. Don’t you DARE yobisute me (remove the -san) from my name. Either we are all name-chan or name-san if we are on good friendship terms, or we are all surname-san. I will NOT tolerate being name-san when everyone else is surname-san, or the very worst of all, name-chan while everyone else is surname-san. Bloody rude!!!
Pant, pant, end of rant.
BTW I call my husband by his name and nothing else, and he assiduously calls me nothing at all. He will walk through the house and garden looking for me rather than call! In his family, everyone is referred to by their positions in the family (Jiichan, Baachan (but with the honorific o dropped) for grandpa and grandma, his sister and I use names and no san or chan, but her husband is name-san to us all despite living in the same house with the inlaws for twenty years now. It does sort of denote that he is an outsider, not a full member of the family and also a man and thus to be respected as well as separated. I’m just my name, as is my husband but he calls his sister “ne-chan” which is means “Older Sister.”
Really, by the time you graduate from university maybe a handful of people in your life are left using your given name.
I don’t know why you would say “it’s sort of like X, except make X like Y”. Instead of “it’s sort of like Y.” Don/Dona in Spanish is used for someone of relatively high social rank. “San” in Japanese is used for virtually everyone, so it’s not like “Don” in Spanish at all. It’s more like “Mr.”, “Mrs.” and “Miss” from 100 years ago in the US, when people were much more formal. There is no real equivalent today, when use of first names is common.
We partner with a Japanese company, and routinely add the -san in emails, and then one guy asked us not to do it with his name - turns out he’s actually a Chinese expatriate (with a name that’s Japanese-looking if you say it as a multi-syllable word, but it’s actually his full chinese name) and didn’t see the need.
it depends. I’ve worked for a couple of Japanese companies (in the US.) in both cases, we pretty much settled on a compromise; we (americans) addressed them as family name-honorific and they (Japanese) addressed us informally. Worked fine.
This.
I wouldn’t classify myself as an expert, but having been married to a Japanese woman for about ten years and having visited the country several times, I have more than a passing interest in Japanese culture. I’ve read A Geek in Japan, and I’ve started reading Japan’s Cultural Code Words. And I do get the sense that the social dynamics of the Japanese workplace are awfully complicated. Example, if you want to advance some sort of proposal, you need to get informal verbal approval from the powers-that-be before you officially present it for formal approval. Conformity/concensus is highly prized, so actions don’t usually get taken unless everybody is on board; it’s up to you to do the legwork to obtain that concensus. Another example, if you’ve inadvertently offended someone, they’re not likely to tell you outright; you end up having to guess and figure it out for yourself in order to repair the relationship. This can happen in the US too (probably not in Boston, where people tell it like it is), but I gather it’s very much the norm in Japan.
And then there’s the whole gift-giving issue. here’s a (surely incomplete) taste of the rules.
The second book above goes into much more detail than the first, and although it’s not specifically addressed to workplace culture, it does seem to refer to it a lot. I’ve only just begun reading it, but I’d recommend it (and also the first book) to anyone interested in Japanese culture.
I keep reading yobisute as “yobshite”. Which, given your reaction to it, is perhaps not inappropriate.