My name in japanese?

[houck]

Hajimemashite.

My name is Vincent Houckham. Can someone tell me what it is in japanese.

Thanks,

[welldone101]

Well it's based more on pronunciation than spelling, and since I'm not sure how you'd say your last name I can't help you there. But if you pronounce Vincent how I pronounce vincent then I'd say your katakana name is binsento or ビンセント.

[olapointe]

Vincent,

Hagimemashite. Boku ha Otto LaPointe desu. Yoroshiku!

There are some pretty standard translations to Japanese for most typical western first and last names. Using romaji, I believe your first name would be the following:

Binsento (remeber that there is no "v" sound in Japanese so usually the katakana used involves the 'b' sound). So in katakana it would be:

ビンセント

There are some pretty typical last names in every language that I'm sure have typical Japanese translations. Sometimes it might be difficult to tell how the Japanese might translate a name (If your a non-native speaker) because the translations might be based in part on spelling but I find that the majority name translation to Japanese is based on phonetics. In this case, the pronunciation of your name might help me.

If I may take the liberty of assuming your last name sounds like "ho-kum" it might be spelled in Romaji like this:

Ho-ka-mu (I've added dashes to separate the syllibaries)

In katakana like this:

ホーカム

If you want to skip the dash and hold the "hou" sound a little longer with the "u" then you might spell it likes this:

ホウカム (Romaji - houkamu)


Again, the pronunciation might help but if a Japanese person saw your name spelled in English they might already attribute a pronunciation and spelling to it automatically or they might ask you how to pronounce it and then attribute a katakana spelling.

In the case of my name 'LaPointe'...my in-laws asked me how I would like it to be pronounced for legal / formal purposes so I elected:

Ra-po- i-n-to (as opposed to 'Ra-po-i-n-te')

so in my case i was asked what I would like the last katakana character to be: トor テ.

So my last name ended up being in katakana: ラポイント

My first name, Otto, ended up sounding like the Japanese word for 'father/husband' so that was a whole 'nuther exercise in chosing how to spell it in katakana which I will spare you.

I hope this helps and that anyone feels free to issue corrections.

Thanks
ojl