How to say "What is your name?"

Question

I learned the informal as "Como te llama?" and the formal as "Como se llama usted?". When I queried it here I got "Como se llama?". Can you explain the differences?

Answer 1

¿Cómo te llamas [tú]? is used to ask someone your own age or younger what their name is. "tú" is also used with someone you are familiar with (but, you probably wouldn't be asking them what their name was if you knew them )

¿Cómo se llama [usted]? is used to ask someone older or someone you want to show respect to, like a teacher.

I hope this helps with the differences between tú and usted!

Answer 2

The way to say "What is your name?" is "¿Cómo te llamas?" It is literally "What do you call yourself?" I suppose you could say "¿Qué tu nombre?" but I've never heard it before.

When I was first learning, one thing I was always confused about was Me/Te/Le/Nos/Les.

¿Cómo me llamo? - What is my name? or How do I call myself? ¿Cómo te llamas? - What is your name? ¿Cómo SE llama? - What is his/her/your(formal) name. notice how this is not te; rather se. ¿Cómo nos llamamos? - What are our names? - How do we call ourselves? ¿Cómo ses llaman? - What are their names?

Answer 3

This is a good question. "Como te llama" means "what is your name," "Como se llama" means "what is his/her name" (informal) However, when you add the word "usted" into the phrase it shows respect, making it formal

It is actually "llamas." - nrdyAWSM, Mar 11, 2010

Answer 4

The informal is ¿Cómo te llamas? with an S.

Also, don't forget your tilde (accent mark) as you won't be saying the right thing without it.

Now, for this question you would use the formal in almost every case, because since you don't know the person's name, you aren't exactly on an informal basis with them.

One exception would be if you were speaking to someone much younger than you. Then you could use the informal.