Name in Japanese S Stephanie

Stephanie in Japanese

ステファニー
Katakana
ステファニー
Hiragana
すてふぁにー
Romaji (Hepburn)
Sutefanī

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

How Stephanie sounds in Japanese

Read it one katakana at a time:

Su
Te
ファ Fa
ニー

Full reading: Sutefanī

Do more with Stephanie in Japanese

Why Stephanie 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, Stephanie appears as ステファニー. This is the correct and respectful way a non-Japanese name is represented; it is not a kanji "translation". A Japanese reader sees ステファニー and immediately reads it by its sound, Sutefanī.

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 Stephanie becomes ステファニー 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.