Originally Posted by Valkyrie
(Post 6778287)
Chan
Chan (***12385;***12419;***12435;, Chan?) is a diminutive suffix. It is an informal version of san used to address children and female family members. It may also be used towards animals, lovers, intimate friends, and people whom one has known since childhood. Chan continues to be used as a term of endearment, especially for girls, into adulthood. Parents will probably always call their daughters chan and their sons kun, though chan can be used towards boys just as easily. Adults may use chan as a term of endearment to women with whom they are on close terms.
Chan can be considered a feminine mode of speech in that it is used mainly by, or towards, females. Its pattern of usage is similar to using "dear" when addressing someone in English. Males would not use chan when addressing other males (other than very young children, or idiomatic cases like Shuwa-chan, described below).
"Pet names" are often made by attaching chan to a truncated stem of a name. This implies even greater intimacy than simply attaching it to the full name. So for example, a pet rabbit (usagi) might be called usa-chan rather than usagi-chan. Similarly, Chan is sometimes used to form pet names for celebrities. For example, Arnold Schwarzenegger gained the nickname Shuwa chan in Japanese. Pet-names may also use variations on chan (see "euphonic suffixes", below).
Although traditionally honorifics are not applied to oneself, some young women adopt the affectation of referring to themselves in the third person using chan, a mode of speech normally only found amongst small children. For example, a young woman named Maki might call herself Maki-chan rather than using a first person pronoun.
The Japanese media use chan when mentioning pre-elementary school children and sometimes elementary-school girls.
copy/paste from wikipedia
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