Name in Japanese M Marie

Marie in Japanese

マリー
Katakana
マリー
Hiragana
まりー
Romaji (Hepburn)
Marī

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

How Marie sounds in Japanese

Read it one katakana at a time:

Ma
リー

Full reading: Marī

Do more with Marie in Japanese

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

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 Marie becomes マリー 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.