Name in Japanese H Haley

Haley in Japanese

ヘイリー
Katakana
ヘイリー
Hiragana
へいりー
Romaji (Hepburn)
Heirī

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

How Haley sounds in Japanese

Read it one katakana at a time:

He
I
リー

Full reading: Heirī

Do more with Haley in Japanese

Why Haley 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, Haley appears as ヘイリー. This is the correct and respectful way a non-Japanese name is represented; it is not a kanji "translation". A Japanese reader sees ヘイリー and immediately reads it by its sound, Heirī.

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 Haley becomes ヘイリー 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.