Today, I'd like to write about how western names are treated in Japan. The roman alphabet is known in Japan, and used quite frequently, for example in brand names or as an emphasis in advertising. So you would think that they should be able to handle western names better than, say, westerners would be able to handle Japanese names.
But somehow, this is not the case. At almost every occasion someone asks for your name, they expect your name written in katakana. This comprises all the places where you sign up for something: the computer account in the lab, the gym, the bank account, and so on.
In most places, it is possible to additionally give the name in roman letters. But in this case, it has to be written exactly as shown in the passport, including all middle names you might have. This leads to problems when the space on their form runs out, which it often does for the 23 characters in my name.
Even then, you are saved under your katakana name in their computer systems. So if someone needs to look up your record, they have to search for the name in katakana. And that inevitably leads to problems if you can't remember how they originally wrote the name.
So how do they write your name in the first place, if you are an unsuspecting foreigner with no knowledge of the Japanese language (like myself)? They simply ask you to say the name out loud to get the pronounciation right, and then assemble similar-sounding syllables from the fifty-something syllables in the katakana syllabary. So, depending on the person writing your name, it might end up being written differently each time.
For example, on my bank card, my name is written as イザベル ディートリッヒ, which is roughly pronounced as Izaberu Dītorihhi (according to Google translate ;-)). On the gym card, however the last name is written as ディトリッチ, which is pronounced Ditoritchi. As you can see, they have a few problems getting my name right. First, they can't really deal with the "l" sound (there is no such thing in Japanese). And second, Japanese words don't end with consonants, so they cannot represent these words using Katakana. In most cases they will therefore append a "u" (or an "i" in some cases), to the end of the foreign word. Biru, anyone?
