How to write your name in Japanese characters -katakana-

After learning hiragana and katakana letters,
there are many people asking,
“How can I spell my own name in Japanese?”

Yes, a lot of people get confused how they can spell their name with just 46 characters.
So, today we learn how to write your own name in Japanese!
If you can teach your friends or family how to write their names in Japanese, they’ll be happy too!

Are you ready? Here we go!

Hiragana or Katakana?

As you might already know,
in Japanese there are two alphabets; Hiragana and Katakana.
Katakana are usually used to write names or words that are not native to Japanese.
So, names of the non-Japanese people are often written in Katakana.

I actually don’t see any problem writing your names in letters other than Katakana.
One of my friends told me if he writes his name in katakana he feels he’s excluded from the Japanese community so he prefers to write his name in Hiragana or Kanji instead.
That’s totally fine.
But as long as you know how to write your name in Katakana,
converting it to hiragana will be very easy,
so to start off, let’s learn how to write your name in Katakana for today.

Vowel sounds of Japanese

Even if you cannot pronounce 46 Japanese letters correctly, don’t worry.

The important thing is that you can pronounce the 5 vowel sounds a, i, u, e, o correctly.

Japanese vowel sonds, a i u e o

Why is this important?
Because English vowel systems and Japanese vowel systems are so different.
Do you know how many vowel sounds there are in English language?

20 sounds!

Whereas Japanese language only has 5 vowel sounds.

So when thinking of writing your names,
knowing which vowels to be used is very important.
When thinking of this,
just forget about English spelling and try to focus more on the pronunciation and how it sounds to Japanese people,
because English spelling cannot be directly converted into Japanese letters.

For example,
“Mary” can be pronounced in three ways.

①me-ree
②mEHree
③ma-ree

This means when converted into Japanese letters,
there are three ways of writing “Mary” depending on how you pronounce it.

First Mary (me-ree) can be written in Japanese letters as メリー（Merii）
Second one becomes メアリー（Meari-）
The third one is マリー(Mari-)

Each Japanese character is either a simple vowel sound, a-i-u-e-o or the combination of one consonant and one vowel.
This is why being able to pronounce a, i, u, e, o correctly is very important.

Changing pronunciation of your name to match the Japanese pronunciation

Now, how would you write the name “Kate” in Japanese?
When the spelling is directly converted into Japanese letters,
you might write as カテ(ka+te)
but this doesn’t sound like “Kate” as in English.
“a” sound as in “Kate” is pronounced as “ei”
and “e” sound in the end is what is called schwa sound(vowel sound omitted).

So first you need to change the spelling of “Kate”
so that a-i-u-e-o sound can be reflected.

That is, KEIT

As explained above, one of the points in Japanese pronunciation is that
all letters end with a vowel sound.
But when it comes to English names,
double consonants or names ending with consonant (or schwa sound)
are quite popular.

For example, if your name ends with one of the consonants below,
you can use the katakana as shown.

“CK” becomes ック（kku）※
　e.g.)　Jack→ジャック(jakku)
“D” becomes ド(do)
　e.g.) David→デイビッド（Deibiddo）※
“F” becomes フ(fu)
　e.g.) Jeff→ジェフ（Jefu）
“G” becomes グ(gu)
e.g.) Greg→グレッグ(gureggu)※
“K” becomes ク(ku)
　e.g.) Clerk→クラーク（Kuraaku）
“L” becomes ル（ru）
　e.g.) Daniel→ダニエル（Danieru）
“M” becomes ム（mu）
　e.g.) Beckham→ベッカム（Bekkamu）
“P” becomes プ(pu)
e.g.) Philip→フィリップ(Firippu)※
“S” becomes ス（su）
　e.g.) Alexis →アレクシス(arekushisu)
“T” becomes　ト（to）
　e.g.) Matt→マット(Matto)※
“TH” becomes ス（su）
e.g.) Beth→ベス（Besu）
“X” becomes　ックス（kkusu）※
　e.g.) Alex→アレックス（Arekkusu）
“Z” becomes　ズ（zu）
　e.g.) Luiz→ルイズ（ruizu）

※ small “ッ(tsu)” written above is the indication of double consonants.

Now, do you know how to write “Kate” in katakana?

The answer is;
Kate→Keit→”t” in the end becomes “to”→keito
→ケイト
Did you get it correct?

Revised Katakana table for you!

Below I made a katakana table.
This table is not a normal katakana table that is often written in textbooks.
I’ve revised it to reflect the pronunciation of English names.
I hope this will be helpful for you!

Again, English spelling is not as important as how it sounds in Japanese,
so try to convert English spelling according to the sound first,
and don’t forget to put vowel sound for every consonant that appears.

long vowels

You might wonder what “ー” is that appears in some names.
This is used when there are long vowels.
Examples of such names are listed below.

Cathy →キャシー（kyashii）
Jennie →ジェニー（jenii）
Carter →カーター（kaataa）
Jeffrey →ジェフリー（jefurii）

So when the same vowel sounds continue,
just put “ー” instead of repeating アイウエオ.

Popular English names in Katakana

If you still don’t know how to write your name in Katakana,
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