Name in Japanese S Sonia

Sonia in Japanese

ソニア
Katakana
ソニア
Hiragana
そにあ
Romaji (Hepburn)
Sonia

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

How Sonia sounds in Japanese

Read it one katakana at a time:

So
Ni
A

Full reading: Sonia

Do more with Sonia in Japanese

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

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 Sonia becomes ソニア 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.