Skip to content

Japan Know How

Patrick in Japanese

Patrick in Japanese

The name Patrick is written パトリック in Japanese.

パトリック

pa-to-ri-kku

5 morae

Syllable by syllable

Patrick is 7 letters in English and 5 beats in Japanese. The two counts are close because Patrick is already built from syllables Japanese can take almost unchanged.

  1. pa
  2. to
  3. ri
  4. a held beat
  5. ku

The small ッ has no sound of its own. It holds the beat and doubles the consonant after it, which is why Patrick takes longer to say in Japanese than an English speaker expects.

Written vertically

パトリック

Vertical writing runs top to bottom, and columns run right to left. You will meet it on book spines, shop curtains, formal letters and name cards. At 5 characters, Patrick makes a long column — which is one reason long foreign names get shortened in everyday Japanese writing.

In kanji: ateji suggestions

Ateji picks kanji for how they sound, not for what they mean — the same trick that writes America as 亜米利加. One sound in Patrick has no kanji reading at all, because the kana for it was invented for foreign words in the twentieth century. Those fall back to the nearest Japanese sound, which puts this set one step further from your name than most.

波都理久

hawave
tocapital
rireason, principle
kua long time

葉斗里玖

haleaf
tothe Dipper; a measure
rivillage; a league
kublack jade

Sounds Japanese did not have. パ → ハ. The kana for these were assembled in the twentieth century for foreign words, and no kanji is read that way, so ateji falls back to the nearest Japanese sound. This is not a shortcut — it is how the traditional spellings were built too.

The held beat gets no character — it is a pause, not a sound.

Because of those substitutions, a Japanese reader saying these characters aloud will land near Patrick, not exactly on it.

These are suggestions built from sound, not a translation of your name. We can tell you how each character reads and what it means on its own; we cannot tell you what the combination looks like to a Japanese reader, and we will not tell you it is safe to have tattooed. For anything permanent, show the exact design to someone who reads Japanese fluently first.

How common is Patrick in America?

1964peak year
57thrank that year
451strank in 2025
689,424born with it since 1880

18802025

It is on the way down from a peak that has passed.

Source: US Social Security Administration, national data 1880–2025. Names given to fewer than five babies in a year are not published, so rare spellings are missing rather than absent.

Patrick in Japanese name divination

3 2 2 3 2 = 12 strokes

NumberStrokesReadingMeaning
地格 Earth12凶 InauspiciousObstacles
総格 Total12凶 InauspiciousObstacles

地格 Earth — The given name alone. Traditionally read as early life.

総格 Total — Every stroke in the name. Read as the whole life.

Only two of the five numbers can be calculated from a given name alone. Add a family name in the converter to see all five.

Seimei handan is a traditional Japanese practice, not a prediction. The stroke counts are arithmetic and verifiable; the readings attached to them are folklore, and schools disagree. We use the Kumazaki classification, which is the most widely published one.

This name comes to 12 strokes, which this school reads as 凶. Worth knowing before you take it personally: 43 of the 81 numbers in the table are marked that way. It is the commonest outcome in the system, not a verdict on your name.

Names near this one

Keep going