What’s in a name?

My name and the mix of Japanese and Swedish names and the problems that this have caused to the Japanese system is another long story that I aim to post about when I find the energy (little Baby Sunshine has started a new routine of waking up at 4AM, then promptly going back to sleep at around 7, just about the time when I need to get ready for the commuting war, tapping my energy).

When I write e-mails in Japanese, I make it a point of writing my name, first name only if it's someone I know a little, in roman letters. This is done deliberately by me to position and remind the Japanese person that I'm not Japanese (making them go "oh, look how good Japanese he can write" and not "this guy obviously can't string a proper sentence together, he needs to go back to school") which might be the case if I would sign off with only my Japanese family name.

It gives a pretty strong contrast to the text in Japanese and also signals that it's ok to call me by the first name (which I much prefer, calling me formally by my Japanese family name with a –san attached to it might not get my attention).

However, lately this has caused significant variations in the e-mails with a new partner company I'm corresponding with. For the sake of it, say my name is "Tomas Yutani (湯谷)" and I sign the mails with "Tomas". Over the course of three responses from my Japanese counterpart, he first started with "Dear Mr. Tomas", then, the next time followed by Tomas様 (the courtesy "san" in chinese characters) and then latest 湯谷　様 completely in Japanese. It seems like he is going for a gradual shift to Japanese on me, but I'll keep signing off with "Tomas", I won't yield!