Type your name and see it in Japanese katakana — the script Japan uses for foreign names. This katakana name converter checks a dictionary of 600+ names against the spellings Japanese media actually use, and falls back to a pronunciation-based conversion for everything else. You get the katakana, its hiragana, and the Hepburn romaji reading. Everything runs in your browser — your name is never uploaded.
Type your name above to see it in Japanese.
🔒 The dictionary and conversion rules run entirely on your device. Nothing you type is sent to a server — you can go offline after the page loads and it still works.
Japanese uses three scripts together. Kanji are characters borrowed from Chinese, each with a meaning and a fixed set of readings. Hiragana is the flowing script for Japanese grammar and native words. Katakana is the angular script reserved for words that came from other languages — including foreign names.
So when your name is written in Japan — on a delivery slip, a conference badge, a bank form — it is written in katakana. That is not a downgrade or a placeholder; it is the correct and respectful way a non-Japanese name is represented. A Japanese reader sees katakana and immediately understands "this is a foreign name, read it by its sound".
Katakana is a syllabary: almost every character is a consonant + vowel pair (ka, ki, ku, ke, ko), plus the five bare vowels and a lone "n" (ン). To fit an English name into that system, three things happen:
Because sounds are being approximated, more than one spelling can be reasonable — which is why this tool tells you when a result is a standard, established spelling versus an automatic guess.
You will find sites and shops that promise to "translate your name into kanji". What they actually do is ateji: picking kanji whose readings roughly match your name's sound (or whose meanings sound flattering), for example writing "Mike" as 舞空 to get a "mai-ku" reading. This can be a fun, decorative keepsake — a tattoo, a print, a piece of art.
But be clear-eyed about what it is: a Japanese person cannot read those characters as your name. Kanji chosen for their sound are not a real name — there is no convention that says 舞空 means "Mike", so a reader has no way to know that is what is intended, and might read it several other ways or as ordinary words. For anything practical — introducing yourself, filling in a form, a name tag, mail — katakana is the name Japanese people will actually read and recognise. Enjoy a kanji version as decoration if you like it, but do not mistake it for how your name is written in Japan.
Katakana. In Japanese, foreign names are written in katakana — the script reserved for words borrowed from other languages. This is the correct, standard way your name appears in Japan: on forms, name tags, business cards and news articles. Kanji is used for Japanese names, whose readings are fixed by the characters. Writing a foreign name in kanji is possible as a decorative "ateji" (picking characters for their sound or meaning), but the result is not something a Japanese reader would recognise as your name — see the note below.
For common English first names it is very reliable: the tool carries a dictionary of 600+ names using the katakana spelling that Japanese dictionaries, publishers and media actually use (Michael → マイケル, Sarah → サラ). These are labelled "Standard". For a name not in the dictionary, it falls back to a pronunciation-based conversion and labels the result "Approximate" — a close, sensible guess rather than an authoritative spelling. There is often more than one acceptable katakana spelling for the same name, so treat an approximate result as a good starting point.
Japanese has a smaller set of sounds than English, so some are swapped for the nearest Japanese equivalent. There is no "L" — it merges with "R" (レ), no "V" traditionally (often written ブ/ヴ), no "th", and every consonant except "n" must be followed by a vowel, which is why "Smith" becomes スミス (su-mi-su). Long vowels and stress can also shift. This is normal and expected: it is how every foreign word is adapted into Japanese.
No. The entire conversion — the dictionary and the pronunciation rules — runs inside your browser in JavaScript. Nothing you type is uploaded, logged or sent to any server. You can turn off your internet connection after the page loads and it will still work.