Name in Japanese D Dale

Dale in Japanese

デール
Katakana
デール
Hiragana
でーる
Romaji (Hepburn)
Dēru

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

How Dale sounds in Japanese

Read it one katakana at a time:

デー
Ru

Full reading: Dēru

Do more with Dale in Japanese

Why Dale 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, Dale appears as デール. This is the correct and respectful way a non-Japanese name is represented; it is not a kanji "translation". A Japanese reader sees デール and immediately reads it by its sound, Dēru.

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 Dale becomes デール 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.