Japanese Name Converter

Type a first name and get it in katakana, the script Japanese uses for foreign names. The 898 names listed below were not generated by rule: each one was checked against how Japanese speakers actually write it. On 323 of them the textbook transliteration rules give a different spelling from the one in real use — Jose is ホセ, not the ジョース the rules predict.

Every name has its own page: the katakana, a syllable-by-syllable breakdown that shows why the name gets longer or shorter in Japanese, the vertical form used on name cards and shop curtains, ateji — kanji chosen for their sound rather than their meaning — and, where the records exist, how common the name has been in the United States since 1880.

How a name becomes katakana

Japanese is written in syllables, and nearly every syllable ends in a vowel. A consonant that stands alone in English picks up a vowel on the way in: David becomes デイビッド, de-i-bi-ddo, with the doubled consonant written as the small ッ. Long vowels get the bar ー — James is ジェームズ, and dropping the bar makes it a different word. Sounds Japanese never had — v, th, the English l — are approximated: there is no l, so Lisa and the Japanese name Risa are both リサ. Those rules cover most names; the exceptions are the reason this list was checked one name at a time rather than run through a converter.