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I have trouble understanding the following sentence:

> ルーカスさんは、自分をファーストネームで呼んでもらいたいと言うけれども、三年も年上の人なので、どうも「トム」とは呼びにくい。

Is it. Mister Lukas wants to get called by his first name but it's hard to do
so because he is 3 years older than the speaker. Or does the speaker wants to
call him Tom?

I don't know to whom 自分 is pointing, isn't it always pointing to the speaker?
In this case the sentence wouldn't make sense since the speaker wants to
receive something "もらいたい".

I think I am confusing either the 自分 or the もらいたい part.
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2014-07-20T02:01:51.203
17880
2014-07-20T09:58:44.500
2014-07-20T02:14:26.767
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question
grammar
Use of 自分を and もらう
Although it isn't a great analogy, I sometimes think of 自分 as the Japanese
counterpart to the "reflexive" (just because 自分を sometimes translates to
"himself" or "herself"). That doesn't really work here, but in any case, 自分
still points to ルーカスさん, even though he isn't the speaker:

> **自分を** ファーストネームで呼んでもらいたい  
>  _he wants to get people to call **him** by the first name_  
>  he wants to be called by his first name

So,

> ルーカスさんは、自分をファーストネームで呼んでもらいたいと言うけれども、三年も年上の人なので、どうも「トム」とは呼びにくい。  
>  Mr. Lucas says that he wants to be called by his first name, but him being
> three years older than me makes it really quite hard to call him "Tom".
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2014-07-20T02:30:22.237
17881
2014-07-20T02:30:22.237
1628
17880
answer
In a basic sentence, 自分 is a **reflexive pronoun** which refers back to a
subject. It can often be translated with English reflexives like _himself_ or
_herself_. It doesn't necessarily point to the speaker.

However, in this case we have 自分 in indirect speech, which is a little
different:

> **ルーカスさん** _i_ は、[ **自分** _i_ をファーストネームで呼んでもらいたい ]-と
> 言うけれども、三年も年上の人なので、どうも「トム」とは呼びにくい。

…and in cases like these it's a [**logophoric
pronoun**](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logophor), a way of referring back to
ルーカスさん in the main clause from the indirect speech.

There's also a dialectal usage of 自分 as a **first-person pronoun** , and when
it's used that way it _does_ point specifically to the speaker. I point this
out in case it was the source of your confusion when you wrote "isn't it
always pointing to the speaker?".
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-07-20T09:58:44.500
17885
2014-07-20T09:58:44.500
17880
answer