Does anyone know the kanji for these four Western names?

[Himura]

I need these 4 names in Kanji... can you help me?

1. Thomas
2. Andreas
3. Florian
4. Alexander


Thanks!!! 😄

 

[Elizabeth]

阿例救参堕阿 works for Alexander, （アレクサンダー）and according to this naming guide there are at least three other phonetic transcriptions as well.

 

[Himura]

Thanks ^_^ can you tell me the other names as well?

 

[Elizabeth]

Thomas （トーマス）could be 棟間州 among others. Not being English, Andreas and Florian are a bit harder to track down. Would Andrea do with a made up "su" ending ?

 

[Arashi]

I hope I don't seem too rude for asking this, but... um... what's the point?

 

[Elizabeth]

It's probably for a story or something. Does it matter ?

 

[PaulTB]

Originally posted by Arashi
I hope I don't seem too rude for asking this, but... um... what's the point?

If you're really lucky you can end up being called 'Kick Bottle' for
the rest of your (Internet) life. ;-)

Google Groups

 

[Glenn]

Originally posted by Himura
I need these 4 names in Kanji... can you help me?

1. Thomas
2. Andreas
3. Florian
4. Alexander


Thanks!!! 😄

Getting western names in kanji is all well and good, but if you were to use them in Japan you may be scoffed at. See this message. Aside from that things can get messy using kanji with western names (here I am thinking of getting long strings of kanji for one name or having kanji put together that make no sense). Of course, if it is all just in fun (which I assume it is), then there is obviously no problem. I just thought that I would clarify the whole "name in kanji" issue, since it seems to be a fairly common one.

 

[Himura]

If you wonder why I asked for these names to be written in kanji... A female german friend asked me -some class-mates... that´s all...
And because I'm a kind guy...^^

 

[Eelco]

What might be a better idea is to ask someone Chinese, since in China your name would always be written with Kanji. (Granted, the Chinese would probably use different kanji than the Japanese would, and probably kanji that don't exist in Japanese).

Florian could be: 富路里案
Andreas could be: 案度例阿洲

Mind you that the Japanese have different pronunciations for a lot of characters, and putting your name in Kanji won't help the Japanese understand how it's pronounced. You'd still need to add the katakana.

Alexander: アレクサンダー
Thomas: トーマス
Florian: フロリアン
Andreas: アンドレアス

There are many more possible combinations. The best thing to do is to isolate each sound, and find a kanji that you think has a nice meaning. Negative kanji should be avoided at all cost, and depending on the gender of the person certain kanji should never be used.

Don't use this unless you're a girl: ko (子)
Don't use this unless you're a boy: ro (郎)

My name for instance: Eelco, unfortunately ends on the "ko" sound even though I consider myself to be a boy. Since using 子 (child) would only strengthen the belief of the Japanese that I am a girl, I decided to use 虎 (tiger).

Eelco = 英瑠虎 (translated: brave blue tiger)

 

[PaulTB]

Originally posted by Eelco
Eelco = 英瑠虎 (translated: brave blue tiger)

Although not English blue tiger - judging by your profile.

 

[Eelco]

No, I'm very much a Dutchlander...

mind that kanji like 英 for 英語 (English)
米 for 米国 (America) and many other kanji were chosen by the Chinese for their sound to write the names of foreign countries. The Japanese have copied these.

If you have IME installed on your computer, try typing a country name in katakana and pressing the space bar. You'll get the most horrendous kanji combinations

イギリス = 英吉利 (England)

Here's a short list of single kanji used to describe countries:

英 (ei) England (from 英雄 (eiyuu) / Hero)
仏 (futsu) France (from 仏 (hotoke) / Buddha)
蘭 (ran) Holland (from 蘭 (ran) / Orchid)
独 (doku) Germany (from 独立 (dokuritsu) / independence)
米 (bei) USA (from 米 (kome) / rice)
漢 (kan) China (from 漢 (kan) / the Han dynasty)
伊 (i) Italy (from 伊達 (date) / dandiness)
和 (wa) Japan (from 大和 (yamato) / Land of mountains | Japan)

 

[PaulTB]

Originally posted by Eelco
[...]Here's a short list of single kanji used to describe countries:

英 (ei) England (from 英雄 (eiyuu) / Hero)

England did pretty well, nice meaning _and_ easy to write.

[edit] Although technically イギリス is also used to refer to the UK / G.B.

 

[Glenn]

Originally posted by Eelco
...mind that kanji like 英 for 英語 (English)
米 for 米国 (America) and many other kanji were chosen by the Chinese for their sound to write the names of foreign countries. The Japanese have copied these.

(中略)

Here's a short list of single kanji used to describe countries:

英 (ei) England (from 英雄 (eiyuu) / Hero)
仏 (futsu) France (from 仏 (hotoke) / Buddha)
蘭 (ran) Holland (from 蘭 (ran) / Orchid)
独 (doku) Germany (from 独立 (dokuritsu) / independence)
米 (bei) USA (from 米 (kome) / rice)
漢 (kan) China (from 漢 (kan) / the Han dynasty)
伊 (i) Italy (from 伊達 (date) / dandiness)
和 (wa) Japan (from 大和 (yamato) / Land of mountains | Japan)

For your interest, here is the Chinese list of country names (普通話 - Mandarin):
英國 - England
法國 - France
荷蘭 - Holland
徳國 - Germany
美國, 美洲 - America/USA
神州, 中, 中國, 中華, 華, 華夏 - China
義大利, 意大利 - Italy
日本 - Japan

By the way, the Chinese use 和 for things Japanese as well (和式 - Japanese style), and 漢 for Chinese things (the language can be called either 漢話, 國文, 國話, 中文, or 華文). Chinese-English is 漢英, as in 漢英字典. Anyway, if you would like to use a Chinese-English dictionary, there is one available at zhongwen.com, which is where I got all of the country names.

P.S. I tried using the traditional Chinese characters where I could, but some of them don't exist in the NJStar Communicator Japanese character set, so some of the characters are Japanese simplified (徳 and 蘭 come to mind).