In Japanese, is usually written ()
is an artistic ateji — chosen for sound and meaning, not an official spelling.
For anything permanent, have a native speaker check it.
About kanji names
Japanese is written with four scripts, side by side — often in a single sentence.
- Kanji (漢字) — characters that carry meaning. 愛 means love, 光 means light. Most kanji have several readings, chosen by context. These are what we turn your name into.
- Hiragana (ひらがな) — a rounded, phonetic script for native Japanese words and grammar. No meaning on its own, just sound.
- Katakana (カタカナ) — an angular, phonetic script used mainly for words that came from outside Japan: coffee, computer, and foreign names. Emily is エミリー; David is デイビッド.
- Rōmaji (ローマ字) — the Latin alphabet, used on signs, in brand names, and to show pronunciation. emirī, deibiddo.
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.
In three steps, all inside your browser.
1. Your name → Japanese sound. First we work out how your name is pronounced in Japanese, the way it would be written in katakana (Emily → エミリー, emirī). Japanese has a small set of syllables — every one ends in a vowel or "n" — so a name is reshaped to fit them. Names with more than one common pronunciation let you pick yours.
2. Sound → syllables. The Japanese reading is split into syllables: e · mi · rī. Where it makes the result more beautiful, we compress: a syllable ending in "n" becomes one character (ken → 健), and consonant clusters are simplified rather than padded (Alex → a · re · ku, not a · re · ku · su). Long vowels are shortened (Emily's rī becomes ri), as they nearly always are in ateji — the katakana above keeps the full length.
3. Syllable → kanji. Each syllable is matched to a small, hand-curated set of kanji with the same or closest Japanese sound. The first choice always carries a positive meaning — love, light, wisdom, blossom — and you can swap any character for another with the same or closest Japanese sound but a different meaning. One calligraphy font is applied to the whole name, so the characters read as a single work.
Some sounds in your name don't exist in Japanese, or have no beautiful kanji. For those we borrow a character whose reading is close — the way Japanese itself has done for centuries in ateji. When we do, we mark it with ≈ and show you the character's real reading (fi ≈ hi, so the kanji 陽 normally reads hi). Characters without ≈ carry that reading in standard Japanese.
No — and we'd rather be clear about that. In everyday Japan, foreign names are written in katakana, which we show you beneath every artwork. Kanji versions are ateji (当て字): an artistic tradition of choosing characters for their sound and meaning. Think of it as a portrait of your name, not a translation. Every character set on this site was chosen and reviewed by native Japanese speakers, and we never use characters with negative or awkward meanings as defaults. For anything permanent, show the katakana and the kanji to a native speaker you trust.
Some do. Treat it as a design draft, not a final word — and have a native speaker check it first. The Premium 4K clean edition gives your artist the exact characters in a high-resolution image to review.
Yes — full-size PNG with a small credit line. The Premium Pack adds 4K, the clean edition, all 13 fonts, and exclusive styles — one small payment, lifetime access.
Never. Everything — the kanji matching, the art, the download — happens entirely in your browser. Your name is not sent to any server, stored, or tracked.