Help Japanese Name Romaji to Kanji Translation

Hello.

I'm trying to find a Japanese person on Mixi, and I know their full name. Well, I entered it into the search and got no results. After that, I realized that no normal Japanese person would register with their name in English letters, it just doesn't make sense. So now, after recovering from that bout of idiocy, I need to find out how to translate the name Nikishido Yukiko into it's original Kanji.

I have no idea how to do it though... I assume Yukiko would just be yuki and ko, but I'm not sure. I'm even less sure about the family name.

Also, is there anything else I should take into account here? I tried asking somebody on MSN, and they said something confusing. I don't really know whether to take my friends info seriously, as he is at the same level as I am with Japanese. Here is the conversation (he is shadow):

...
says:
so I need to find out the kanji for nikishido -_-
ﾂｼﾂｬﾃ?楪ｳ ShaDoW - Humph! Nani sa!~ says:
the problem there would be simple
ﾂｼﾂｬﾃ?楪ｳ ShaDoW - Humph! Nani sa!~ says:
the family name is shortened
says:
What is it shortened to?
ﾂｼﾂｬﾃ?楪ｳ ShaDoW - Humph! Nani sa!~ says:
i dont know
ﾂｼﾂｬﾃ?楪ｳ ShaDoW - Humph! Nani sa!~ says:
what ur terying to find out is
ﾂｼﾂｬﾃ?楪ｳ ShaDoW - Humph! Nani sa!~ says:
what is was before they shortened it to their current name
...

I have no idea what he's on about.

You can search for names in WWWJDIC. Use "Search for words in the dictionary" and select enamdict. Nikishido isn't found though Nikishi is. A cursory google search revealed that it could be Nishikido that you are looking for. Enamdict gives three possible kanji names for Nishikido:

西城戸 【にしきど】 Nishikido (s)
西木戸 【にしきど】 Nishikido (s)
錦戸 【にしきど】 Nishikido (s)

For Yukiko enamdict seems to give almost endless possibilities. Maybe someone else more familiar with Japanese names can help with this one. I bet there's a few common and popular kanji names for Yukiko.

edit:

If you use Windows and have the Japanese keyboard input enabled you can see what kanji it guesses when you input ゆきこ or にしきど. For にしきど it gives only 錦戸 and while there are still many possible choices ゆきこ the order of them is probably based on some estimate of popularity.

If you don't have the Japanese input installed I can write out the kanji for you.

One thing you should be taking into account is the very strong likelihood that your friend didn't register with Mixi under her real name. Very few people present their actual names on the internet (hey....look around here....) and far fewer females than males on Mixi use anything resembling an actual name, be it their own real name or not.

Your MSN friend reminds me of Christopher Robin talking to Pooh.

Why did you include your friend's (incredibly odd) MSN name and yet redact your own?

Thanks breez, I'll give a few different combinations a try. I do have Japanese input installed.

Mike: Well I thought that, but I figured it might be a bit like myspace... You (hopefully) register your real name, but it is never publicly displayed (unless you choose for it to be), only your alias is displayed. There is an option to search for people by inputting their real first and last name. It's meant to help people network with those they might already know. I have no idea though, I can barely read Japanese so I can't see how Mixi says searching works.

It's a bit of a longshot... She might not even use mixi. Worth a try though, it would be nice to find my long lost friend. -_-

lol, I didn't purposely not include my msn name. My name is a single emoticon which didn't survive the copy-paste procedure, unfortunately.

most people i've talked to do not like mixi because it makes too much personal information and tracks activity, so if they use it, it's always under an alias.