Yukigo
Your name in katakana
Japanese writes foreign names in katakana, the syllabary reserved for words that come from outside. Type your name below and watch it turn, syllable by syllable, with the sound of each one.
The conversion runs in your browser — your name is never sent anywhere — and it follows English reading rules: the same letters sound different in Italian, French or German, and the result changes accordingly.
Your name in katakana will appear here.
Why katakana specifically
Japanese uses three scripts at once: kanji for concepts, hiragana for grammar and native words, katakana for everything that arrives from outside — loanwords, brands and people's names. A foreign name in hiragana is not unreadable, but it jars: katakana is the signal that says "this word comes from another language".
Japanese counts syllables, not letters
Every katakana sign is a whole syllable, almost always a consonant plus a vowel. A lone consonant cannot stand by itself, so it borrows a vowel. That is why "Marc", four letters, becomes マルク in three syllables, and "Matt" becomes マット.
The sounds Japanese doesn't have
There is no L: it becomes R, which is why Elena is エレナ. V is written with ヴ or with B. English TH turns into S. These aren't sloppy approximations: it is the Japanese sound system rebuilding your name out of the bricks it has.
First name and surname
The two parts are separated by ・, the middle dot Japanese uses inside foreign names: Mario Rossi becomes マリオ・ロッシ. The long dash ー is not a hyphen but a lengthened vowel, and it is often the only difference between two versions of the same name.
A few examples
| Name | Katakana |
|---|---|
| Michael | マイケル |
| Ashley | アシュリー |
| Matt | マット |
| Nicole | ニコル |
| Christopher | クリストファー |
| Emily | エミリー |
Learn to actually read it
Recognizing your own name is step one. With Yukigo you learn all the katakana with spaced repetition, audio and handwriting — then hiragana, kanji and grammar all the way to the JLPT. Free and ad-free.
Free beta, installs in two minutes. How do I install it?
Frequently asked questions
It is the most common rendering, not the only possible one: many names have more than one accepted spelling, and the choice depends on how you pronounce it. The most common names have a hand-checked reading; everything else follows your language's spelling rules.
For anything permanent, have a native speaker check it. Katakana doesn't carry the meaning traps that kanji do, but vowel length is a judgement call and varies from person to person.
Because every lone consonant picks up a vowel. "Marc" is a single syllable in English; in Japanese it needs three signs, マルク, and each one takes a beat.
It can, by picking kanji that sound similar, but it isn't the norm. Kanji carry meaning, so you risk writing something you didn't intend. For foreign names the standard is katakana.
No. The conversion happens entirely in your browser: your name never leaves your device and never reaches our servers.