Your name in Japanese
Here's a site I found today that will transliterate common English first names into Japanese katakana. Set the style to "Calligraphy", "Sans Serif", or "Manga" for the most easily readable results.
I checked out several names and it seems to work well. Apparently the programmer took the trouble of actually making a dictionary of common names and their transliterations instead of the easier (and far less accurate) method of transliterating each combination of letters separately.
The downside of this is that if you have an unusual name or one not in the database, it won't be able to transliterate your name. But for the names it does have (and there are a lot), it does a pretty good job.
3 comments:
Is there some Engrish going on here?! It says my name is Riia.
It's giving you the Japanese pronunciation of the katakana -- the "Japanified" version of your name. Katakana is a phonetic system that is used to transliterate foreign words, but is based on Japanese phonics. So there's no distinction between "L" and "R", and limited inclusion of sounds not native to Japanese.
This use of katakana does sometimes lead to confusion as to the proper English spelling or pronunciation of a word. For instance, when I was in Japan in 2004 I heard from coworkers that several students had been asking if I was any relation to US presidential candidate John Kerry.
My name is much more interesting with the Japanese pronunciation: KYARORAIN! It's cool to see the different styles of characters too.
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