Japanese uses four scripts side by side: kanji for meaning, hiragana and katakana for sound, and rōmaji for the Latin alphabet. A Japanese person writing a foreign name by ear reaches for katakana, which records the sound but carries no meaning — kanji is the meaning-based art form this site uses instead, in the ateji tradition.
Japanese is written with four scripts, side by side — often in a single sentence.
So when a Japanese person writes your name, they reach for katakana. It records the sound precisely and everyone can read it, but it says nothing about who you are.
Kanji does the opposite. It can't capture the sound exactly — but each character carries a meaning, and Japanese has a long tradition, ateji (当て字), of choosing kanji for a foreign word by sound and meaning together. That's the tradition this site plays in. We show you both: the katakana every Japanese person would recognise, and the kanji you choose for yourself.
See your own name reshaped into Japanese sound, then matched to kanji you choose for their meaning.
Create your kanji name art — free