Happy Birthday

誕生日おめでとうございます (tanjōbi omedetō gozaimasu): happy birthday, in its full polite form. 誕生日 tanjōbi is the birthday; おめでとう omedetō is the congratulation said at New Year and at any happy event, from めでたい, auspicious, a word as old as the Taketori monogatari; ございます is the polite verb that turns a word into an address to someone. So the Japanese says it is auspicious where the English wishes happy, and it is a congratulation rather than a wish. Three old words in a modern order: the library holds no page with the whole formula before 1946, which says only that the printed formula is postwar, not that anyone lacked the words. The design carries the whole polite form, not the short tanjōbi omedetō.