Quick answer
Me llamo Ana. Soy de Londres. Soy profesora.
My name is Ana. I am from London. I am a teacher. Three sentences, and you have introduced yourself.
The words of this lesson
Your name: literally "I call myself"
Spanish does not say "my name is". It says me llamo Ana, which is literally "I call myself Ana". The verb is llamarse, and the little word me is what makes it point back at you. For someone else you change that word: ¿cómo te llamas? for a person you address informally, ¿cómo se llama usted? for a stranger, a customer or an older person.
You will also hear mi nombre es Ana. It is correct but it sounds like filling in a form. Use me llamo when you speak.
Where you are from, and what you do
Origin uses ser: soy de Manchester, ¿de dónde eres? Jobs use the same verb, but Spanish drops the article: soy profesora, not "I am a teacher" word for word. English speakers almost always add una here because English demands "a". Spanish does not.
Jobs also have a female form: profesor / profesora, médico / médica, ingeniero / ingeniera. Pick the form that matches you, not the person you are talking to.
Greeting someone back
When you are introduced, the standard reply is encantado if you are male and encantada if you are female — the word describes you, so it changes with you. Mucho gusto is neutral and works for everyone, which makes it a safe first choice.
Where you are matters
In Spain a group of friends is addressed with <span class="es-inline">vosotros</span> (¿de dónde sois?), while Latin America uses <span class="es-inline">ustedes</span> (¿de dónde son?) for every group, formal or not.
Memory trick
Think of "me llamo" as "me, I call": the me comes first, exactly as in the Spanish.
A short dialogue
Typical mistakes
Mi nombre es Ana, soy una profesora.
Me llamo Ana, soy profesora.
Spanish leaves out the article before a job. Adding una is the single most common English-speaker slip here.
Yo soy Tom de Bristol.
Soy Tom, soy de Bristol.
Origin needs the word de attached to ser, and the subject pronoun yo is usually dropped because soy already means "I am".
Encantada, dice Tom.
Encantado, dice Tom.
Encantado/encantada describes the speaker, so a man says encantado even when talking to a woman.
Practice
Practise these introducing yourself
0/8 matched — tap a Spanish word, then its translation
Check yourself
Which sentence introduces a female doctor correctly?