Just how do you pronounce the name of Boston’s new pitcher from Japan?

We wanted to be sure we had it right, so when word of the Red Sox deal with Daisuke Matsuzaka came down, we found a native Japanese speaker to help us out.

A graduate student in Brown University’s engineering program, 24-year-old Hayato Urabe, was glad to help us out – and to give us some Japanese cheers that we could use when we’re at a Red Sox game and want Matsuzaka to feel right at home.

Turns out, Urabe’s not just a big baseball fan but a real Red Sox fan. [Yes, that means he harbors negative feelings toward the Yankees and is even known to taunt his friends who are Yankees fans long after the season’s over.] Urabe was here in the States watching when the Red Sox won the World Series back in 2004 – and he’s hoping Matsuzaka brings great things to the team.

Let’s turn to that ever-pressing question: Just how do you say this pitcher’s name? Listen to Urabe say Daisuke Matsuzaka for us.

You probably noticed right away that he said what we Americans think of as this man’s last name first. That’s because in Japan, you always say a person’s surname before you say their given name. Urabe tripped over his own words when he tried to transpose the way he says this pitcher’s name.

Urabe knows how many Americans are pronouncing this man’s name, and he tells us what pitfalls to avoid in doing that. But he also acknowledges that the American pronunciation adds a nice cultural twist.

When the season starts and Matsuzaka takes the mound, Urabe will be cheering in English, for the most part – unless he’s at Fenway and Matsuzaka might be able to hear him cheering or it has gotten really tense at the end of the game. What we wanted to know, though, is what those Japanese cheers sound like.

Finally, we couldn’t end the interview without asking about that phrase that every Red Sox fan loves to utter – the one on T-shirts and on the tip of every fan’s tongue, particularly when the Sox face off against their hated rivals, the New York Yankees. Urabe struggled to match the distinctly New England insult.

And then, three hours after we sat down with him, he told us it had finally dawned on him. He had the Japanese equivalent.