Name in Japanese D Daphne

Daphne in Japanese

ダフネ
Katakana
ダフネ
Hiragana
だふね
Romaji (Hepburn)
Dafune

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

How Daphne sounds in Japanese

Read it one katakana at a time:

Da
Fu
Ne

Full reading: Dafune

Do more with Daphne in Japanese

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

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 Daphne becomes ダフネ 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.