Can I use my Chinese name as my Japanese name version?

Question

I'm a Chinese, and my name is 彭宏森. But I still confuse how to make it into a Japanese name version. So I was wondering how do I covert my name and how do I read it in Japanese. My Chinese name is pronounced as "Peng Hong Sen" in English. The "彭/Peng" is my last name, and "宏森/Hong Sen" is my personal name. Please do me a favor.

Answer 1

That will depend on your intentions. Without additional qualifications, your name would be read ホウ・コウシン in Japanese, as these are the only on-readings of the corresponding characters that are current in Japan. If that is okay with you, no additional effort is needed. (Note though that 彭 is not a frequent character in Japan, and you cannot be sure that an arbitrary Japanese person will be able to decipher it. They might attempt to read it as 膨, which is frequent, but that would lead to a technically incorrect ボウ.)

It is perfectly acceptable to give furigana that demands an approximation of Chinese reading. In this case, [彭]{ポン}[宏]{ホン}[森]{セン} would be the correct rendering of the Mandarin reading in Japanese (I fould it out by checking the names of other people having these characters in names).

Alternatively, if there is a desire to turn the name into a Japanese-sounding pseudonym, without changing the characters, both 宏 and 森 are popular elements in names, and can theoretically be combine into a name read, probably, ひろもり. (Such a name can plausibly exist, though in Japan it sounds more like a surname.)