Timeline for How do you write someone's name if you don't know what kanji to use?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
5 events
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| Oct 11, 2013 at 21:48 | comment | added | Robusto | Except katakana is how the Japanese write foreign names, including those that were originally Japanese. When Fujimori was the president of Peru, Japanese media wrote his name as フジモリ, IIRC. | |
| Apr 30, 2012 at 5:35 | vote | accept | CommunityBot | ||
| Apr 27, 2012 at 13:49 | comment | added | user458 | The reason for using katakana is to indicate that it may be preferably written in kanji, but kanji is not used for some reason, as in this case. | |
| Apr 26, 2012 at 21:58 | comment | added | Ian | The reason why they tend to write names in katakana is because katakana is thought of as a direct display of the sounds. Basically the line of thinking is "I don't know his name, but this what it sounds like". Whereas kanji and hiragana are thought of as displaying meaningful words. | |
| Apr 26, 2012 at 20:51 | history | answered | istrasci | CC BY-SA 3.0 |