Novelist, technologist, photographer and resident of Japan, Michael Werneburg, discusses the frustrations of living with a foreign name in Japan. This guest post is an expansion of an article on his own website that details his struggles with living with a foreign name in an English-speaking country.
Katakana Blues
My surname is “Werneburg”, and the name just doesn’t work in Japanese. It originates in the forested heart of Germany where its pronunciation is obvious even if it is by no means an everyday name. But Germany’s rolling hills and rolling r’s are a long way from Japan, and it’s here that the import—like an invader species—causes some chaos.
The first problem for foreigners like me is that the Japanese language has a range of sounds that is more limited than in our European languages. Whereas English has some twenty vowels and twenty-four consonants, Japanese has only five vowel sounds and nineteen consonant sounds. Further restricting the pronunciation in Japanese is the use of a syllabary rather than an alphabet. These syllables combine a consonant and a vowel together, so that when you want to use a consonant you have to follow it with a vowel sound that fits one of the available syllables. The ‘n’ sound sometimes stands alone, but the rest must always incorporate a vowel.
This differs from English in that English-speakers can modify vowel sounds and combine consonants to make a wide variety of nuanced sounds. For instance, putting an ‘r’ after the ‘a’ in “cat” yields “cart”, and changes the vowel sound entirely. This is not available in Japanese.
This has an enormous impact on pronunciation. Foreign names can become unrecognizable. My name becomes downright comical.
The katakana spelling I’ve chosen is 「ヴェーネバーグ」. This is based on the original German pronunciation, and is written in roman characters as “veenebaagu”. I’m sure you can see the potential for comedic errors. The “gu” at the end is particularly funny to me but again if I want a ‘g’ I need to choose one of ‘ga’, ‘gi’, ‘gu’, ‘ge’, or ‘go’.
Fair enough, that’s how they speak here. I grew up in Canada pronouncing my name in an English fashion, not the German way. Now it’s time to move to the Japanese way.
And yet, even that’s not enough. As they say, “To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.”
Some of the computer systems in use in the country can’t deal with the “veh” sound at the beginning (ヴェ) and insist that it’s got to be “vueh” or worse yet “ueh”. So they’ll insist that my name is not 「ヴェーネバーグ」 but 「ヴエーネバーグ」 (vueneebaagu) or 「ウエーネバーグ」(ueneebaagu).
The problem of dueling computer systems is a constant headache. Such as wire transfers.
I have two bank accounts. The spelling of my name is different in the two accounts, and I have to be very careful to ensure that the banks’ systems (and staff) are careful about which spelling they need. It gets even worse when they start to mix “full width” and “half width” Katakana together, but I just don’t understand this level of lunacy and can’t explain it here. Suffice it to say that I have to anticipate problems due to the different capabilities of the computer systems at different levels of government and between the government, client and supplier institutions, (past) employers, aforementioned banks, landlords, the government registers of my company, and various other institutions.
So I’ve become one of those foreigners with an unrecognizable surname. If I’d known any of this was coming, I’d have opted for something that all of the readers (human and otherwise) could agree upon, like “uenebagu”; laughable as that looks in the roman character set, at least it would have been a lot easier for the Japanese to pronounce, and the spelling would be consistent for humans and computers alike.
While I’ve amassed quite a collection of mis-spellings of “Werneburg” among English-speakers. I haven’t been here long enough to amass as long a list of mis-spellings. But here are some I’ve noticed.
Beenebaagu
One of the airlines thinks we spell our name like this. We’ve had it pronounced this way in person, too. It’s probably because the Japanese language assigns both the ‘bu’ and ‘vu’ sounds to the same Katakana syllable ブ so it’s up to the reader to guess the pronunciation. And since the original name involved a ‘v’/'b’ shift, it’s only fair that it do so again!
Michal Vienebarg
In fairness, I have to hand it to these people for trying. There’s no way of making that name in katakana, they must have started from scratch with “English”. For my part, I can’t even decipher anything from the kanji in their name to tell who they are. All I know is that they sent me correspondence.
The “barg” at the end is kinda fun, though.
Wemebagu
This name has popped up in Canada, but it’s now followed me to Japan. Hello, old friend.
I’m stuck with it
Little Orphan Annie was right. It’s a hard-luck life, it really is. My son’s going to grow up with all of these spelling problems and inter-organizational nonsense dogging his every move. Sorry, kid. Maybe I should have tried to make a katakana version of “Whirlybird”. Let’s see: “Ueribado” or 「ウエリバド」. I proposed this spelling to my wife, and she rejected it out of hand.
Actually, she rejects any change of the spelling of our surname, because it would mean going to court to change the registration of the family in Japan. These things are treated with great care in Japan, well above the endless paperwork involved with changing my name in official documents. So if you’re a foreigner moving to Japan, chose your name with care. If my cautionary tale’s not enough, contact me and I’ll help you get sorted.
Check out Michael Werneburg’s online journal that he has maintained since 1998. It is a six-thousand-page quagmire of words and photos.
Japanese Animal Sounds
All You Need To Know About Japanese Names (before you go to Japan)
City Names In Katakana
Panchira Japan WTF!
Yakitate!! Japan – British Stereotypes
scott j
C Ohara
Japan Australia
Chris
emuu
Jay Dee
lina
freedomwv
Fidel
I am in tears over “Hello, old friend.” … That’s just … Too funny.
Thanks for the insight into possible issues with names. My first name (since it has a W at the start) will probably fall into some of them at least. Last name should be easy to kana-ize, though.
I assume some of the same issues might even crop up if you are just visiting, rather than moving there, but not nearly so many.
I can’t imagine that visitors would have any real problem. You don’t need to fill in any forms or obtain any official certificates and so on. The funny thing is that some coworkers and I just cooked up the katakana one morning at the office in my first job here in Japan precisely because I was suddenly faced with a lot of paperwork. I can clearly recall being pleased to find that there was a ‘ne’ katakana because a) it fit my name’s original pronunciation and b) the ネ katakana itself had a nice “Asian” authenticity to it.
Oh yeah, this is terrible
My problem is my middle name – I should have banished it when I got to Japan as its been nothing but trouble – there are always only two boxes on forms, so the question is always where do I put my middle name..
If you have three names, mathematically speaking there are six ways you can arrange them – i’ve seen them all on forms addressed to me!
By the way, looks like Shinsei bank lets you create accounts with the name in English, no katakana required… I don’t use them, but I’ve successfully transferred money to a mate who does
Michael, the issue of middle names never crossed my mind, as I don’t have one myself. Thanks for your suggestion of simply omitting them, it sounds like the way to go.
My personal account *is* with Shinsei. They didn’t tell me that I could go with romaji. (sobs to self)
I’ve never been able to omit my middle name, because it’s on my passport and thus my gaijin card, and then my drivers license. Everytime I sign up for a bank account, membership, etc… they always insist that it matches, so I have to put all three names (plus I’m a Jr., so I get to include that too) on everything. It’s a huge pain because my name never fits on the provided forms.
The middle name thing is always a problem! I have to write all 3 names out as it’s on my passport, etc so I’m always being called by random combinations of them in hospitals, etc.
I’m sitting there wondering who the announcement is for and all the Japanese people are staring at the only foreigner in the room, ah, that must be my name for today then!
Also, my surname in Katakana comes out as “bloomer” with hilarious results (for everyone else!)
Mike, thanks for contributing this great article with good tips for foreigners in Japan to deal with their name in katakana.
I have an ‘issue’ of my own. When I got appended to zoomz’s family register she had written one of my middle names, ‘David’, as 「デイビッド」 (deibiddo) instead of 「デヴィッド」(deividdo). Personally I would have preferred the latter as the ヴ can be used as a surrogate ‘v’ which is closer to the pronunciation of the actual English version of the name. In saying that both versions are said to be correct.
Similarly, we have registered Ash’s name as 「アッシュリー」 (asshuree) when apparently it should be 「アシュリー」(ashuree).
But the hoops you have to jump through to get either of these changed makes it not worthwhile.
I tried reading the legislation on changing the name registration and couldn’t make sense of it. Then again, IANAL. Or terribly bright, it would seem.
My real last name is Hall which translates to ホ-ル (hawru) which can be translated back to English as ‘whore’…
So it does!
It was suggested to me that I try to use a kanji name based on the supposed original meaning of my surname instead of a katakana name, but my wife said that it was a bad idea because I didn’t have a family registration to back up a claim to such a Japanese name.
I had the name “クマシロ” in mind (bear city) or 熊代.
LOL. @Yomama, you should have just changed your surname from ホ-ル to ソープランド and be done with it.
And i thought i had trouble growing up in Australia with people ALWAYS spelling ‘ Jeppesen’ incorrectly! I am living in Peru at the moment and my first name provides difficulty (Scott) as they never have an S followed by another letter…it is always followed by a vowel such as ‘siempre’ (always), ‘salud’ (health), ‘seis’ (six). Any letter preceeding the ‘S’ would also be a vowel such as ‘escuchame” (listen to me) or ‘estudiar’ (to study).
So when they pronounce my name they say “Escott”. It was very funny to me the first few months. No matter how clearly i said “Scott”, the reply would be “Escott”.
Out of curiosity, and only if you have time, what is my name in Japanese? My surname is Danish. Scott Jeppesen.
Great article by the way, especially for someone who has never been to Japan!
I didn’t know that about Spanish, is that a Peruvian Spanish thing, I wonder?
“Scott” runs into the same problem in Japanese; no such thing as an ‘s’ standing solo. My fist thought was “sukaato” 「スカート」, but that seems to be how “skirt” is translated. Perhaps a better version would be “sukatto”, written 「スカット」 in katakana. The double tt signifies a slight pause before the “to” sound, so “suka’to”. Which seems to mean “refreshed” by the way. Maybe some other “Scotts” living in Japan could comment?
“Jeppesen” is similar to the surname of a friend I’ve got here who complains about the “je” sound. It doesn’t exist in Japanese, per se, you have to do what I do with “ve” and use a double character at the beginning. After that it’s entirely straightforward, though. I would write “Jeppesen” as “jepesen” in romaji or 「ジェペセン」 in katakana. Note that the ‘e’ sounds are all pronounced and all sound the same. No schwa half-pronounced ‘e’s. It would sound like “Jehpehsehn”.
Interesting. For ‘Scott’, I would have went for スコット (sukotto). Using a コ (ko) rather than a カ (ka). Any other opinions out there?
I think it also depends on your English accent. A North American Scott is different to a British or Australian Scott…
Somehow i can relate to this! My problem is I have two-word first name without middle nor last name. Yeah, no last name. So I always confused what to fill in the form everytime. I even needed to go back to a bank one time because they couldn’t process the insurance money from my account due to the difference of name! (the order of my name in the insurance n in the bank account were different) T_T
Now that’s fascinating, I had no idea that people could have no last name in Indonesia. Hmm, according to Wikipedia it’s the same in various countries around the world.
…which also points out that Japan didn’t have last names until the Meiji restoration!
I like the story of your friend choosing his degree-title as a first name here in Japan. As good as any other, I suppose. Do his friends call him “Ir-kun”?
“Aussie” can be translated to オ-ジ or awwji which then suffers on a translation back to English… “I am an Aussie” can end up sounding like “I am an orgy”.
And an unfortunate scenario if you misinterpreted the following question: “Do you like Aussies?”
Nice article. I can’t say I’ve had that many problems with my name over here in Japan. I mostly omit my middle name for simplicity and decided a few years ago on kanji equivalents to my name with the help of some good Japanese friends. All fine and dandy now for the most part.
Quite a few Mikes on this thread, I see. Did you eventually adopt the kanji name as the registered spelling for your name?
Am not in the stage where I need to register official spellings for my name – unless I’m missing something. Am I supposed to do that even on a one-year visa or something?
Yes, you’re supposed to register if you’re in country for more than 30 days. See the opening remarks in this guide:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_registration_in_Japan
And perhaps get yourself to the ward office (or equivalent) to inquire. I don’t know about your area, but here in Shinagawa there is an “International Friendship Association” that’s got an office adjacent to the main ward office. They speak English and can probably give you some advice if you’re not up to stepping right into the mix at the government office itself.
Please note that some government officials take a dim view to people who register late, so you might get into a bit of a hassle. But as someone who’s been thrown out of the country on a visa issue, let me assure you that it’s best to take the situation in hand before you somehow get caught out.
I’m not talking about Alien Registration, I’m talking about official registration of kanji for a name. As far as I know, you have to use your name in romaji when you register an Alien card, but then again, I’ve never tried to use kanji, so I could be wrong.
Might pop down to ask sometime, as I work at a City Hall myself
I guess I was one of the lucky ones. “Mike” easily translates to Maiku with the “u” vowel hardly sounded. “Finlay” was a bit trickier – it got translated as “Sinarei” once – but in general they usually managed a consensus with “Fuinrei”.
If you have an “unusual” name (and by unusual I mean not commonly heard in Japan) there’s not a lot you can do unless you’re willing to use a nickname or contraction. Reesan, you’re pretty lucky mate! Not a lot they can do wrong with you name.
I’m sure that to your family back home, Sinerai would seem like a hell of a stretch from Finlay!
Thanks for this great article. I’ll definitely keep that in mind if we should ever move there!
Thanks for the feedback. In the mean time, I think I’ll explore the legal alias idea. There’s a reasonable explanation here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_registration_in_Japan#Legal_alias
Interesting Michael. On a different perspective, similarly, English is not always embracing of foreign names either. For example, I know a couple of teenage boys arriving in Australia from Turkey. This was in the late seventies when wearing your name on your T-shirt was a fad for a short time. The boys were named Safak and Ufuk. You can imagine the reaction their T-shirts got. My advice to them was lose the T-shirts quick-smart and change the names quick
.
On another example, I worked in an office of an Engineering Workshop where there was only one telephone for the whole lot of us. When someone from the workshop (about 30 people) received a phone call, my boss would open the back door of the office into the workshop and yell on top of his voice the name of the person. In one case he yelled the name ‘Stan Beck’ – a welder with a German background – without thinking too much about it. The reaction in the workshop was just too funny to see…..people scattering into the corners.
Those are great examples, and I agree that English-speakers have a bit of a tin ear for foreign sounds. Especially North Americans, I’d say.
My original article on my name was full of bizarre misinterpretations of the name, including EnergyAustralia’s take: “Wernbrienurg”. Did they really think that that was a likely name?
Sadly, I’ve got plenty of examples.
wow, quite a useful article and it was fun reading through the comments. Didn’t know non-Japanese could get kanji as registered names.
I’ve only encountered it in Chinese coworkers. I asked a veteran expat resident in Tokyo about the use of a legal alias. He told me:
“Honestly….there are only a few people that do this and they are all a bit weird.”
So there’s that. Looking “a bit weird” in the eyes of your fellow expats.
Fortunately for me, if not the same, my last name’s sound would be very near of the original one (Valenzuela in spanish, ヴァレンズエラ or ばレンズエラ in japanese)
I think Spanish has less sounds than english, btw(5 vowel sounds, maybe consonants are a little bit less than in english, but spanish has a few consonants english has not).
PD: My case surely is the same for most Latin Americans and people from Spain
I believe you played it smart to avoid that 「ヴァ」 at the start of your name.
I read only the title of this article and thought to myself “someone who understands!”
I recently had problems trying to buy an item online using my credit card, only to be rejected as my credit card is under my romaji name and the site insisted on kanji or hiragana names, which my company flat out refused to accept.
I may have lucked out in the easily pronounceable Japanese name department though, as my last name easily transfers to katakana with no difficulty, and トリ might as well be a Japanese name.
Amazing. I guess gaijin weren’t on the vendor’s mind when they built that into the system.
But what could the credit card issuer’s rationale possibly be?
It was a US issued credit card, so I guess it’s just built into their system to not accept any name different from the issued credit card holder, but even though it’s the same name, just in a different writing system, they won’t accept it.
I would assume they have the same problems in other countries with non alphabetic writing systems, but it’s still annoying.
If I were to move to Japan I’d change my name in Sweden beforehand. I currently have 1 first name, 2 middle names and 2 surnames (my parents just couldn’t choose one of them). So in length my name looks something like this: “Michael Bruce Tom Anderson Carling”. So yeah, before I move I’d remove all but the first name and one surname (save the easiest surname).
I’d prolly take my wife’s surname when marrying (if she is Japanese that is)^^
To tell you the truth, I don’t recall that my original name had all that much to do with my katakana name as far as the government was concerned. I’m not sure that there is any mechanism for ensuring that he names match.
My son, born two years ago, has names that don’t match (ironically, it’s only on his Canadian passport that his Japanese-language middle name appears). That said, I think Australia just implemented a rule that requires unified names for Australian citizens born in Japan “for security purposes” so it’s entirely possible that things are tightening in this brave new era.
> I’d prolly take my wife’s surname when marrying (if she is Japanese that is)^^
Dare to dream, sir!
Hahahahahaa.. very funny article. It is hard to live in Japan, especially if they make a mistake in the katakana. They did mine on my gas bill. Now I can’t use it as a legal document, since the name is different from my ARC. Talk about Japanese!
I wish I was a Chinese though.. will not have to worry about these stuff, since my name will already be in Kanji.
Too bad about the gas bill. I suppose the gas company still manages to find a way to overlook their mistake and ask you for money, of course.
A very interesting article. Never thought about that problem before.
My name would be pretty awefull too I guess, as it is a longer German/Austrian one (yes, with r’s of course.)
Might sound a little bit dumb as I’m not that familiar with the subject but why can’t they just use the Romanji Version? Every keyboard can write those after all.
This is another reason NOT to move to Japan. I couldn’t stand to see my name, having existed since the middle ages, butchered by some Japanese officials.
> Might sound a little bit dumb as I’m not that familiar with the subject
> but why can’t they just use the Romanji Version? Every keyboard can
> write those after all.
The spelling limitations remain no matter what character set you use to make the world. There’s just no way to spell many of the things we take for granted.
> This is another reason NOT to move to Japan. I couldn’t stand to
> see my name, having existed since the middle ages, butchered by
> some Japanese officials.
Yeah, mine dates to 1254…
http://familienverband.berneburg.info/wappen.htm
…so I suppose it’s not that fragile. My boy will grow up knowing his heritage just as I did in Canada.
P.S. I hadn’t realized that ortographobia could be so debilitating! 8^)
Your closing line is a bit amusing, “Choose your name with care”? The whole point is that we don’t choose it.
We can choose how to spell it, unless we’re radicals who change their surnames, or those who create a “Foreign only name”, such as all the Chinese men called “Charles”, but aren’t really.
Sure, there’s plenty of lattitude. It’s been suggested to me recently that I change 「ヴェーネバーグ」 to 「ワナバーグ」 (“wanabaagu”).
To give you another example of the gas company’s mistake in the comment above, my wife just pointed out that my health card says 「ウエルンバーグ」 (“uerenba-gu”) because the HR people at my first employer chose it while doing some paperwork. The hilarity….
Wow, really interesting article! I never even considered how much trouble this would cause for things like banks, etc. My name is coincidentally already composed entirely of existing syllables in Japanese (to the point where I usually get asked whether I’m actually Japanese when I’m showing my boarding pass at the airport, etc.)
It sounds like the best advice for those with very non-japanese-ifiable names is to choose the simplest katakana representation and forget about trying to make it SOUND right.
> It sounds like the best advice for those with very non-japanese-ifiable
> names is to choose the simplest katakana representation and forget
> about trying to make it SOUND right.
Succinctly put, mo. I’m going to look into having my name re-cast as 「ウエネバーグ」.
I didn’t have a problem with the translation of my name whilst in Tokyo. It even looked good on the business cards thanks to Katakana.
フィル ビーニー
I didn’t have any of the aggravation of opening bank accounts, etc due to all bills being paid for by the company. The only time I had anything official with my Japanese name was my Gaijin card.
You’re lucky on two counts, then!
I’ve already completed the first phase on my path to an easier life.
http://emuu.net/journal.php?7980
Oh my, this article was very funny! I’ll have to ask my brother what our name (Hutchings) has turned into…. (even here it’s hard to get right, everyone drops the g….)
I think you’d have 「フチングス」, or “huchingusu”. The ‘hu’ sound is halfway between ‘hu’ and ‘fu’.
I’m actually happy, because in Japan they’ve never met any Scanlans….
In America, everyone assumes it’s (the apparently widely more successful) the Scanlon spelling, but here I can lay down the law and establish -an as the way to go.
I’ve never had anyone spell it wrong in terms of banking, etc, unlike America, where basically every major thing I’ve ever had my name on has had the -on by mistake.
Craig on the other hand, is an utter mess, and I’ve been called GooRag, Crack, KooRayeeeGoo, and about a billion other names….
I feel your pain, “KooRayeeeGoo”. In fact I share the “Goo” at the end of my last name.
Curiously, people see that I’ve written 「マイケル」and sometimes say, “ah, mi-chi-eru”.
Don’t you just hate when computers have the audacity to insist? How dare it!
You’re a bloody machine…just run programs, just follow my instructions, don’t think! Don’t feel. Don’t tell me what my name is! You got that?
What’s my name? Take that! What’s my name? Say what? Say that again! I dare you! I double dare you!
sorry…had a flash back
excellent post!
Loco
Thanks, Loco!
He’s black, he’s bald and he ain’t no bitch! That is what Marcellus Wallace looks like.
I was wondering whether when registering for a name in Japan, if one could choose a preexisting japanese name that sounds similar to one’s own. For instance, I might use Tairo Michio for Michael Taylor. Would this be considered ok? it would simplify a lot of things because I could use Kanji to write my name rather than katakana.
Michael, there is a process for this. You have to have something with the name you’ve adopted successfully mailed to your address (perhaps involving putting that name on your mailbox). Then you can take that “proof” that you’re using the alias, and have that registered.
But honestly, your name won’t present a problem in this country. Michael, for years the most popular boy’s name in the English language, is well known here. Taylor I’m guessing would become テイラー or タイラー, which is easy to spell and pronounce.
A really good post – and one that us part-timers don’t generally have to worry about (you don’t exist officially)… and I especially liked reading the comments. Lots of interesting stories/observations there.
Glad you liked it, Ben. I had ago at changing the official spelling but hit a wall. Because my wife is Japanese, she can’t change her name without official blessing. We’d have had to go to the courts and prove that the existing name was a hardship.
So we abandoned the idea.
I have a few comments/questions.
My little brother is going to transfer or do an exchange program and he is very interested in Japanese culture. He takes classes to learn Japanese, is in Japan club, etc.
For YEARS he has been going by Akura, when his name is Brent. Is this wrong?
How would I find how to translate my name or how to “pick” a name? I would also like to know how to find what those names transfer back to in America.
Please feel free to email me (I know its not published, so im going to try and find a way to message you)
Any help/ideas would be greatly appreciated!
Hello, Kendra. It’s not “wrong” to adopt a Japanese name, but it will strike some people as being a bit odd. I don’t know the name “Akura” other than the car, by the way (different spelling, same pronunciation in Japanese).
People in Japan won’t expect a foreigner to have a Japanese name. In Japanese, Brent’s name would be “burento”, I believe. Kendra would be “kendora”. You can find spellings here:
http://www.whatismynameinjapanese.com/brent.html
http://www.whatismynameinjapanese.com/kendra.html
Akura was just a random nickname i chose a long time ago, it has no real meaning (which is why i chose it).
You are correct in how my name would be, ブレント, however i feel that Kendra would be better as ケンヅラ (kendura) as how we pronounce it in American English with our accents.
Also, for foreign names, one would not use hiragana or kanji to write it, because that would be really strange.