Why Fuji-san?

One thing that confused me for a while was why Mount Fuji was often written or spoken as Fuji-san.

The first confusing part is that in Japanese, the word "san" is attached as a suffix to names. It roughly translates to Mr/Mrs/Miss in English, but its usage is significantly broader. So Mr Tanaka is Tanaka-san. Easy enough. But Fuji-san isn't that sort of san... Oh no, nothing that simple.

To understand why, you need to understand the kanji that is used to write Mt Fuji in Japanese. It is written as "富士山" which uses the kanji for "Fuji" and "mountain". So far so good. Now kanji usually have a single meaning, but several ways of reading them (more on kunyomi and onyomi another time.) As a rule, "山" by itself is read as "yama". So in the sentence "that mountain is tall isn't it?", you would read it literally as "ano yama wa, se ga takai desu ne" or "あの山は、背が高いですね".

However another way of reading the kanji "山" is as "san". Aha, it is all falling into place! As you would might have guessed, that's the correct way of reading "富士山".

So what can you take away from all this, apart from a slight headache?

If you want to refer to Mt Fuji in English, go wild with Mt Fuji, since it is a safe bet. If you want to use the Japanese version, use Fuji-san. You might even come off sounding all worldly. Or you might not...

As a word of caution, don't use Fuji-yama! It is just plain wrong and will earn you naught but scorn and derision from all who know you.