Japanese Names In Japanese Writing
Kanji pictographic characters imported from china hiragana and katakana phonetic alphabets developed in japan.
Japanese names in japanese writing. Japanese language consists of three alphabets. To read a newspaper you must know 2 000 commonly used kanji hiragana and katakana which are taught in elementary school and junior high school along with the english alphabets. Writing a foreign name in japanese does not imply to translate it but to transcribe it. Most japanese given names are written in kanji a script of chinese origin where each single character stands for a whole word or concept most names have two kanji characters some three some only one.
The japanese write foreign words phonetically so it is not always possible to say how a name should be written in japanese without further information for example the last two letters of andrea can be pronounced like ier in the word barrier or like ayer in the. When writing both first and last names together in japanese the names should be separated by this symbol. For example allison wilson arison uiruson would be written as アリソン ウィルソン and jose hernandez hose herunandesu is written as ホセ ヘルナンデス. Japanese names have some rather special features.
Japanese names are normally written using kanji characters not katakana. This dictionary does not contain japanese names. Indeed the japanese language is not based on an alphabet but on a syllabary grid called the kana organized around 5 vowels. A very brief explanation.