American Names, Japanese-Style

Things I am learning to say through my Pimsleur lessons today:

• “Can I buy stamps at the station kiosk?”
• “No, but you can buy them at the post office.”

I am also practicing writing American names in Japanese. I find it very entertaining.

American Names in Japanese

Me, Translated

Basically how it works (in the samples I have encountered so far, anyway) is that the name, if not coinciding with Japanese sounds, mutates slightly to fit Japanese pronunciation better.

Then those sounds are rendered in katakana, the syllabary used for words of foreign origin.

It is amazing how totally unrecognizable the names look in Japanese. My personal identity is kind of bound up in both the sound and the sight of my name in English. Or at least in Western languages; I am totally comfortable with my name in French and Spanish, for example.

But it is kind of mindbending to see oneself rendered in a radically different set of symbols. Makes you think!

I hope there are no mistakes in the Japanese writing shown above, but if there are, the deficiencies are my fault and responsibility.