Translation of name to Japanese

[Dazguy]

Hi All,

i'm wondering if anyone can help me. I am after a
japanese translation of the name Darren Hunter.
Hunter would be obvious as i'm sure there is a name for hunter in japanese but Darren from what i read means "little great one" or "great man" if anyone knows the japanese equivalent of Darren Hunter could they possibly email me at
dazguy@hotmail.com any help will be greatly appreciated.

Darren :nin:

[bdenison]

Darren,

I am emailing you a GIF file with your name translated using kanji. Note that their are many diferent ways to do the translation, this is just one method.

[Dazguy]

Thank you for the Kanji of my name it is very
appreciated if possible could you let me know how it reads in english thanks again for your help.

Darren

PS also in the case of like a samurai's name how would it be written like Hunter Darren. I looked through a japanese-english dictionary and found hunter= hanta and that great= taishita so would it possibly be Hanta Taishita?? or something like this?

[bdenison]

Darren,

The kanji I sent would have the following pronunciation:

Da-ren-ryou-shi

Dar-ren is obviously a phonetic pronunciation of your first name using kanji, and “ryou” means to hunting, and “shi” means expert. Ryoushi means Hunter, or Huntsman.

If you wanted the kanji to be read Hunter Darren, you could actually leave it the way it is, since Japanese read right to left, they would read Hunter then Darren.

[Ric Flinn]

Since we're on the subject of name translation, I'm wondering how names are translated phonetically using kanji. Since there's so many kanji that sound the same, are there any rules for picking characters for a phonetic name?

Thanks,
Ric Flinn

[red_fists]

Hi Ric.

I have had my Name translated to get a Hanko.

Normally only Kanji that signify good or ?ositive things are choosen.

[bdenison]

Ric,

Certain kanji also have a masculine or feminine tone to them. Then you also have the Jinmei-yo kanji, which are kanji that are reserved or used for rendering names.

[Earl Hartman]

Translating foreign names into Japanese is tricky. Often people choose kanji that give a close phonetic match, and ignore the meaning of the kanji, which makes their names, when written in Japanese, look, shall we say, pretty silly. When the meaning is translated, you often wind up with something that, from a Japanese perspective, looks pretty outlandish.

In any case, translating foreign names into kanji, whichever method is used, goes against Japanese practice. Except for Chinese names, which are written in kanji in Chinese, and so, consequently, are written with the same kanji in Japanese (with furigana to aid in pronunciation), foreign names are traditionally written in katakana. Japanese do not translate foreign names phonetically using kanji.

Of course, people can do whatever they want, and there is no law against translating your name into kanji if that is what you want to do. But I think most Japanese find the practice of writing European names in kanji pretty amusing (as well as confusing).

As an example, a poster on this board called himself "Tamsahii Saru", or something like that, because his teacher had called him a "spirited monkey" since he apparently leaped around a lot in practice. So he went home, looked in a dictionary, found two words that he, being completely ignorant of Japanese, thought were right, and gave himself a name that would have anyone familiar with Japanese ROTFLTAO.

Caveat Emptor.