Name in Japanese H Hugo

Hugo in Japanese

ヒューゴ
Katakana
ヒューゴ
Hiragana
ひゅーご
Romaji (Hepburn)
Hyūgo

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

How Hugo sounds in Japanese

Read it one katakana at a time:

ヒュー Hyū
Go

Full reading: Hyūgo

Do more with Hugo in Japanese

Why Hugo 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, Hugo appears as ヒューゴ. This is the correct and respectful way a non-Japanese name is represented; it is not a kanji "translation". A Japanese reader sees ヒューゴ and immediately reads it by its sound, Hyūgo.

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 Hugo becomes ヒューゴ 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.