I am sending a gift to a Japanese family (friends of ours). Rather than
address the gift to one individual I want to address it to the entire family.

How do I write

> The Tanaka Family

in Japanese?

I have read a bit about the possible use of _mina_ (to represent all) and
_sama_. Maybe it should be "Tanaka-mina"?

Please also answer in _rōmaji_.
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2016-11-17T05:35:10.137
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2016-11-17T08:34:34.547
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question
names honorifics written-language
How to address a family?
Actually it's not a good idea to translate it. Japanese mail carriers can read
envelopes written in English format, and a bizarre mix of the Japanese and
English styles would make your envelope look worse. Rest assured that you can
always write "The Tanaka Family" or "Mr. Taro Tanaka", using English alphabet,
on the first line.

( **EDIT:** By the way, did you know that, by writing the name on the _first_
line, you are already violating "the Japanese rule"? On Japanese-style
envelopes/postcards, the address comes first and the name comes last. That's
another reason why you should stick to one particular format.)

You can stop reading this here, but in case you're interested, the polite and
orthodox way to write this in Japanese would be:

> 田中家ご一同様  
>  **Tanaka-ke go-ichidō sama**  
>  (lit. Tanaka + family + (honorific prefix) + everyone + (honoric suffix)

Here 家 (け, `-ke`) is a suffix that follows a family name and refers to the
family itself. A family name followed by さん (`-san`) refers to an individual
person in the family, like English "Mr."

But honestly speaking, writing something like this using English characters
looks even funny to me. If you really want to write Japanese words using
English characters, IMHO it's sufficient if you wrote:

> 田中家の皆様  
>  **Tanaka-ke no minasama**  
>  (lit. Tanaka + family + 's + everyone + (honorific suffix))
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