The Japanese of old had to develop a special kind of characters to write foreign names with -- the decidedly industrial-looking katakana (invented by Kobo Daishi -- click here), which takes one heck of more space than the elegant but totally cryptic kanji that they downloaded from the Chinese cargo in the year 600 (see previous page), which shares a lot with the family crests of samurai clans (click here).

This is the latest sort of Japanese script, which foreigners are expected to stop being wholesomely illiterate about -- since the Japanese of all times always tend to dismiss every possibility of themselves speaking any other tongue. That far is evident from the reluctance Japanese webmasters show to crank any single page up in English. Even this minute the majority of Japanese persons simply abhor emailing anybody in Roman alphabet.

Kanji is used for the meanings. Katakana is used for the sounds.

Your names, being non-Japanese, can't be written in kanji, because -- well, frankly, your names have no meaning whatsoever to the Japanese.

So you have to be content with writing it down as it sounds.

But first of all you, at least, must (if you are in a progressive way towards japanophile) know how non-Japanese names are like when written in Japanese and subjected to the Japanese pronunciation.

It is pardonable if you can't recognize your own name when it is written in Japanese script, unless your name is so mundanely simple as mine -- even a most clueless 2 years-old Texan can immediately write my name in my native alphabet (Javanese) and in Japanese script after just one time of showing him how. Foreign names and all English words can be written in Javanese the way they come -- i.e. no alteration of pronunciation at all.

my name in Javanese	my name in Japanese
in Javanese it has no meaning; in Japanese it means 'small battle conch'.

But in Japanese those same names and words will change radically. More complicated names -- and every Christian name is complicated in this sense -- can't get instantly recognized when they are unrolled within the Japanese pronunciation.

For one thing, just in case you have forgotten, China retained all the 'L' of the script they exported to Japan in 6th century. As a result, Japan had no 'L', and every 'L' then is substituted by a radically different 'R' in every occasion. Chinese, on the other hand, never got its way over 'R', and uses 'L' whenever an 'R' is supposed to be.

But there is another way if (because) you insist to get kanji at your service.

Like I said, the kanji shared by the Japanese and the inventor, Chinese, is a clot of meanings.

So, you can seek the kanji characters that convey the meaning of your name in your own language.

Say, your name is 'Neville'. That's a warped form etymologically traceable to 'Neu Ville', which means, initially, 'New Town' or 'New Village', hence it can be written as whatever the kanji is for 'shinmura', 'shinchou', or 'shinmachi'.

A very Christian name such as 'Nathaniel' can be written as 'shuyo', if the meaning is taken to be 'God's gift'. While 'Natalie', 'Noel', and the like can all be 'Christmas' in the Japanese lexicon.

'Meaning' don't have to be so correct here, since the thing -- conversion of non-Japanese names into kanji -- is in itself incorrect.

So if your name is, like, 'Napoleon', 'Grant' (as in 'Ulysses S.'), 'Washington', 'DeGaulle', and so on, you can use the kanji for 'victor', 'victory', 'winner', 'champ' -- 'yuusho'. This will make the entire Spanish Armada and everybody in the movie Gone With the Wind 'loser' if kanjied, but those are not your name anyway, aye? Similarly all names of Catholic saints can be 'yoshi' ('good') while anyone crucifying Jesus 'bad'.

This action would make your name unknown to the Japanese (because the actual name of course doesn't sound like the kanji at all, and that's why the Japanese never write foreign names with kanji to begin with!), but, well, it looks pretty neat if just for showing off outside Japan.

Now, back to the sensible world; foreign words and names are spelled this way in Japanese (I add the spelling in Javanese for an even stranger comparison, but the way to read the words are exactly the same as in English):

S P E L L I N G

W R I T I N G

WRITE YOUR OWN NAME IN JAPANESE SCRIPT

Caution: This is how the Japanese pronounce the letters that make up your name: a : as in 'as in' i : 'ee' u : 'ooh' e : like 'e' in 'Harlem' o : 'oh' And here is how to pronounce the syllables at the right side: kya : qee-ah kyu : cue kyo : qee-oh nya : an-yah mya : mee-ah

• History of Japan
• Family Crests of Samurai Clans
• Samurai is identical with swords, right? WRONG.
• Japanese Swords, Swordsmaking & Swordsplay
• Historically-Correct Samurai Armors
• Authentic Swords of Japanese Warlords
• Samurai Weapons
• Historically-Correct Samurai Armors
• History & Pictures of Japanese Christian Samurai & Warlords
• How a Japanese Warlord Got His Army
• Spaces, Interior Design & Architecture
• Japanese Warlords' Money
• Japanese 16th century Warlords
• Management of a Warlord's Household
• Japanese Samurai Wars
• Origins of Samurai Habits
• Bushido
• Yamabushi, the Japanese Demon-Slayers (For Real)
• History of Japanese Portrait Paintings
• Maps of All Japanese Provinces, Warlords & Battles
• Premodern Japan: Real-Life in Emperor Meiji's World
• Japanese Warrior Codes & Samurai Beliefs
• Real Samurai Legends
• Origins of Japanese Music, Songs, Dramas & Dance
• Many traditions that we assume to be Japanese are actually imported from China: kanji, Buddhism, ikebana, bonsai, tea ceremony, and so on -- even sushi and Shinto. No kidding.
• Things that are 100% Japanese
• Incidents of Real Samurai Lives
• Yakuza & the Underground Samuraihood
• Kamikaze, the Flying Samurai
• Ainu, the Forgotten Natives of Japan
• The Shield Society
• The Japanese Self-Defense Forces
• Ukiyo: the Fleeting World, the Floating World, the Samurai's view of Life (Death)
• Meanings of the Japanese Flowers & the Samurai Flowers
• Incidents of Real Samurai Lives
• Shinto, the Essence of Japan
• Yakuza & the Underground Samuraihood
• Kamikaze, the Flying Samurai
• Zen, Samurai's Buddhism
• Meanings of Japanese Names, Nicknames & Titles
• How the Japanese Name Themselves
• History of Japanese Clothes
• Kimono Culture
• Samurai LEGENDS: since 660 BCE until 1868
• History of Japanese Dolls & Origami
• Structure of Japanese Feudal Society
• Rulers of Japan since 660 B.C. until today
• Shoguns for Dummies
• The Japanese Greatest Warrior Clans
• Cities of Japanese Warlords
• Weird snapshots, strange truths, odd realities & wacky info about Japan
• Samurai ANIME: Watsuki Nobuhiro's

Sources tapped for this page: Nihon Shakai no Kazoku teki Kosei (Tokyo: 1948); Kono Shozo, Kokumin Dotoku Yoron (Tokyo: 1935); Anesaki Masaharu, Nichiren, the Buddhist Prophet (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1916); Robert Cornell Armstrong, Light from the East, Studies of Japanese Confucianism (University of Toronto, Canada, 1914); Sasama Yoshihiko, Nihon kassen zuten (Yuzankaku, 1997); William Aston, Shinto: The Way of the Gods (London: Longmans, Green, 1905); Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1946); Charles Eliot, Japanese Buddhism (London, 1935); Futaki Kenichi, Chuusei buke no saho (Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1999); Kiyooka Eichii, The Autobiography of Fukuzawa Yukichi (Tokyo, Hokuseido Press, 1934); Konno Nobuo, Kamakura bushi monogatari (Kawade shobo shinsha, 1997); Nukariya Kaiten, The Religion of the Samurai (London: Luzac, 1913); A.L. Sadler, The Beginner's Book of Bushido by Daidoji Yuzan (Tokyo: Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai, 1941); A.L. Sadler, The Makers of Modern Japan (Tokyo: Tuttle, 1978); Satomi Kishio, Nichirenism and the Japanese National Principles (NY: Dutton, 1924); Suzuki D.T., Zen Buddhism and Its Influence on Japanese Culture (Kyoto: The Eastern Buddhist Society, 1938); Henri Van Straelen, Yoshida Shoin (Leiden: Brill, 1952); Robert Bellah, Tokugawa Religion; Sato Hiroaki, Legends of the Samurai (Overlook Press, 1995); Masaaki Takahashi, Bushi no seiritsu: Bushizo no soshutsu (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku, 1999); Stephen Turnbull, Samurai Warlords (London: Blandford Publishing, 1992); Paul Akamatsu, Meiji 1868, Revolution and Counter-Revolution (Allen & Unwin, 1972); Nitobe Inazo, Bushido, The Soul of Japan (Tokyo: Tuttle, 1970); Paul Varley and Ivan Morris, The Samurai (Weidenfeld, 1970); Inoguchi and Nakajima, The Divine Wind: Japanese Kamikaze Force in World War II (Hutchinson, 1959), Seki Yukihiko, Bushi no tanjo (Tokyo: NHK, 2000); Amino Yoshihiko, ed. Edojidai no mikataga kawaruho (Tokyo: Yosensha, 1998).