My son's name is Robin. This is generally written in katakana as ロビン (such as "Robin Williams" 「ロビン・ウィリアムズ」 or "Robin Hood" 「ロビン・フッド). The katakana spelling makes sense because it maps to RO-BI-N, but the pronunciation is wrong. ロビン being pronounced like ROW-BEE-N. A closer pronunciation to the way we say the name in my country would be ラベン (RABEN, RAH-BEH-N)
I realize the rules to katakana are sometimes very strict and are sometimes totally loose. It seems silly to me to pick a katakana name that is pronounced wrong just because it maps more closely to western letters, but it also feels weird to "change" what is already an established spelling of a name.
I guess what I'm asking is what would you do? How did you decide to write your name in katakana especially if it's a more common name that has a situation like this, where the katakana doesn't really match the pronunciation.
Thanks!
by JustVan