Hi everyone.
My son is going to Japan as an exchange student and he has a very traditional Icelandic name that most other nations struggle with.
Do people with difficult names come up with a simple version of their names or do their host families and friends make a "Japanese version" of their name?
His name is Þorgeir. The Þor is pronounced like Thor (Marvel movies) and geir is pronounced similar to gear, but it's still not exactly the same.
The direct translation into english is "Thors spear" .
His middle name is Úlfar which can sound a bit like Ooo-lver (almost Oliver), but still not quite the same.
That one means Wolf.
Do you have any recommendations on how to approach this matter?
by andreawinsatlife
13 comments
Japan uses a phonetic alphabet for foreign words (and names) called Katakana. It doesn’t cover the full range of sounds that westerners are used to, but it’s usually close enough.
So I wouldn’t worry about it.
In Japan the last name is emphasized so perhaps that will be an easier one for people to pronounce.
No, they do not make up Japanese names for foreigners.
Thankfully Japanese has the katakana writing system which is phonetic and used to write foreign names (as well as other things). For official documents his name will be as it is written in his passport, but katakana will be used to write his name within the class, etc.
His school may help him figure out the katakana, but if he has a preferred way of pronouncing/writing it that’s fine too.
ETA: don’t worry, that name isn’t very long or complex, and there’s no middle name. In terms of foreign names in Japan it’s relatively simple. Oh, and is this university? Then really don’t worry about it. They’ll just use the romaji.
Well I sure as hell wish **my** name translated to Thor’s Spear. That’s insanely cool.
I have four names so I have a similar situation. Your official name is your last name and then every other name after it in all capitals in Roman letters, in official documents, and bank statements that is what will be used. Documents that require your official name may ask for a Japanese katakana version, which is used for pronunciation. That is not official so it can be any way you like, but I would suggest keeping it as close as possible to the pronunciation of the official name.
Beyond that what you are called and what you write your name as is up to you. For example I have four names so on official documents I have to write all four names but on anything that is not official I only used two, so I think you should make a kind of shortened version of the name, first and last with a katakana phonetic that he wants to be called and use those. He might run across people that are confused that that’s not his official name but just explain that the official name is quite difficult so he uses a simplified name.
I also have a unique last name and the way I wrote it in katakana changed because I discovered that it already existed in katakana after about 10 years of living in Japan. Even though I changed it, there were really no problems because the katakana version of the name is not official in any way
He’s gonna get called Toru 🙂↕️
Anything but Gary and he’ll be great.
Based on your original post and subsequent comments, it seems that the meaning of your son’s name is significant to you. This is of course a beautiful thing, I’m sure you put a lot of thought into it.
But it’ll help your son adjust to his Japanese exchange program much more smoothly if he goes by a phonetic approximation of his given name, such as Toru [トル] or Torugiiru [トルギイル] as other commenters have suggested.
I would highly advise against attempting to translate his name into the equivalent Japanese nouns. While there are some names related to nouns in Japan (Sora meaning “sky,” Hana meaning “flower,” etc.) “wolf” is not one of those nouns, and I fear that if your son announces: “Hi, I’m Thor’s Spear Ookami!” on his first day of school that his new classmates will be amused in a negative sense.
Let’s just say that there’s a certain subset of people who come to Japan with (erroneous) background knowledge of the country from certain sources. You don’t want your son to be deemed to be a part of that subset.
Trying to make up a Japanese or translated name for him will be much more awkward.
トルゲル with トル as a nickname will be the most natural.
Don’t worry about it. They are kids. They will have fun figuring it out. He will be a rock star.
By the way, if someone calls you by your given name and insist on using your last name, that is a way of saying f*#% you in Japanese culture. Very sumatai.
Someone will end up being the one to look at his name and compose a katakana rendering of it. The problem that may arise is they’ll have no idea how it should be pronounced so will just take a stab at it. I can think of any number of possible renderings but maybe I’d think something like ソールゲール or something like that would be simple enough. I’m by no means an authority on how to do katakana names.
Take my real name for example, everyone thinks that my name is two words when it’s actually one word. Here is my name in English, Jonmichal and here is my Name in Japanese Jonmicharu or in Japanese kanji it’s ジョンミチャル