I have a very good friend who wants to translate her name into Japanese . . . naturally she asked me, probably more because I have a Japanese name than because I look Japanese. Anyway, there are three ways we sussed out that we could do it: we could translate it literally (that is, find a Japanese name that has the same meaning as hers), by spelling, or phonetically (by sound).
Her name is Erin . . . I haven't gone through the trouble of finding all of the possible names that could mean "Ireland" in Japanese, but there are probabbly very few. If we translate her name by spelling, it would stay Erin but the pronunciation would change from air-in to air-een. If we translate her name phonetically, it would go from Erin to Eren. Which way do you think is the best?
2007-01-03 18:16:35 · 2 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
Actually, Black Dog, should we choose to name her Phonetically we already have the kanji picked out
http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/9710/erengj2.png
The top character, E, means "blessed with" or "given". The bottom character, Ren (also commonly read Koi) means "love". Another alternative we found would have meant "Picture of a Lotus", using the same character for E that you did in the lower spelling ... also, Rin in that context would more commonly be pronounce "Hayashi"
as for a spelling based translation, the spelling we probably would use (which I don't have upoloaded to my computer at the moment) would mean "Smiling Even Though It's Cold".
As of now, we are starting to lean towards the Eren spelling, because she isn't liking the long e right now.
2007-01-03 20:25:57 · update #1
Probably phonetically. If anyone were to ever use the Japanese version of her name, it would be least confusing for it to sound like what she's used to being called.
2007-01-03 18:32:02 · answer #1 · answered by Geoffrey F 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I'll name your friend in kanji.
What about "æµå"? It means grace or something. But "å" may be difficult to read. Some might call it "kay rin".
"çµµæ" is easy to read. Most Japanese call it "air in". "çµµ" means picture and "æ" does woods.
2007-01-04 04:01:03 · answer #2 · answered by Black Dog 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋