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Why is that young children call themselves by their first name when referring
to themselves? This question is similar to [Speaking in the third
person](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/2320/1328); however, young
children do not understand the connotations of speaking in the third person.

My fiance's cousin who is six refers to herself as ゆりちゃん. Is the only reason
she calls herself by her own name because everyone calls her ゆりちゃん when
talking to her? When do children stop referring to themselves in the third
person and why?
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2012-08-05T03:54:49.403
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2012-08-18T01:48:28.973
2017-04-13T12:43:44.260
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learning
Why do children call themselves by their name?
According, to the wikipedia article for
[illeism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illeism):

> Young children in Japan commonly refer to themselves by their own name (a
> habit probably picked from their elders who would normally refer to them by
> name, this is due to the normal Japanese way of speaking where referring to
> another in the third person is considered more polite rather than using the
> Japanese words for "you", like Omae[3]) though as the children grow older
> they normally switch over to using first person references. Japanese Idols
> also may refer to themselves as so to give off the feeling of childlike
> cuteness.

Which I think has _some_ truth to it. In Japanese it is more common to refer
to children by their name than other languages and also since young women also
use it, there is a chance that the child may pick it up by seeing the usage
from other people. Also, my own personal opinion is that Japanese is very
complicated when it comes to first person and third person pronouns, and that
is why children will use their names to avoid having to worry about it. Women
generally will stop at an early age although some women might continue using
it even up to there early thirties (although people around them might detest
it). I think for men, you will only see the usage in very young children
(preschool or earlier).

Also, I think it should be known that while English speaking countries find
this usage very strange, it is common in other languages such as Thai also.
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2012-08-05T08:09:56.417
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2012-08-05T08:18:39.387
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@JesseGood's answer is correct, but just to add to it:

Not only will other people refer to kids by their name, they will often also
refer to _themselves_ by title when speaking to them. I.e. their mother/father
will likely refer to themselves as "お母さん/お父さん" or "ママ/パパ" and their teacher to
him/herself as "先生" when speaking to them. They might not hear personal
pronouns much at all in their daily lives.

Thus, it's not surprising that kids learn that people have a label which is
used independently from who is using it. Kids have to learn to use pronouns
_at all_ , which is quite different from the problem of learning to use I/you
_correctly_ , which seems to be common in languages where pronouns are more
commonly used.
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2012-08-06T04:24:10.597
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