宇宙人 – 3 ways to say Alien in Japanese
There are three ways you can say alien in Japanese.
- 宇宙人
- 異星人
- エイリアン
Let’s take a look at each of them.
INDEX
宇宙人 – Space People
We first have the most common work for alien in Japanese. 宇宙人 is the word you will hear most in Japanese for alien.
It basically means space people if you break the word down. 宇宙 means space, and 人 is a suffix referring to different groups of people.
https://japaneseuniverse.com/2024/02/18/pac-man-in-japaneseconcepts-behind-development-to-global-icon/異星人 – People from Another Planet
異星人 is not as common as 宇宙人 but is also another way you can talk about aliens in Japanese. Again we can break this down to find the difference between the two words. 異星 is a word that means a different planet or star. So, where 宇宙人 refers to people from space in general, 異星人 refers to beings from other planets.
エイリアン – Alien
Finally we have エイリアン. Just as you may have expected this is a borrowed word from the English word alien.
Bonus Words for Aliens in Japanese!
So the three words above are the ways to refer to aliens in General. But, you can use more specific words for different types of aliens. For example, the typical grey aliens which everyone things of would be called simply, グレイ. This word comes from again the English word.
Also, if you want to talk about specific aliens from specific planets you can add the 人 suffix to the end of the planet.
For example, Martians would be 火星人. That is because of course 火星 means Mars in Japanese.
Great! So now you know how to talk about aliens in Japanese. If you are interested in learning Japanese I have reviewed what I consider the best resource for Japanese Grammar below:
