Name in Japanese C Colleen

Colleen in Japanese

コリーン
Katakana
コリーン
Hiragana
こりーん
Romaji (Hepburn)
Korīn

This is the established spelling used for Colleen in Japanese dictionaries, books and media.

How Colleen sounds in Japanese

Read it one katakana at a time:

Ko
リー
N

Full reading: Korīn

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Why Colleen is written in katakana

In Japanese, foreign names are written in katakana — the angular script reserved for words borrowed from other languages. So on a form, a name tag, a delivery slip or a news article in Japan, Colleen appears as コリーン. This is the correct and respectful way a non-Japanese name is represented; it is not a kanji "translation". A Japanese reader sees コリーン and immediately reads it by its sound, Korīn.

Katakana is a syllabary, so English sounds are fitted to the nearest Japanese syllables and every consonant (except ん) is followed by a vowel. That is why Colleen becomes コリーン rather than a letter-for-letter copy. More than one katakana spelling can be reasonable for the same name, which is why we flag whether a spelling is a long-established one or a natural default.