Name in Japanese T Toby

Toby in Japanese

トビー
Katakana
トビー
Hiragana
とびー
Romaji (Hepburn)
Tobī

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

How Toby sounds in Japanese

Read it one katakana at a time:

To
ビー

Full reading: Tobī

Do more with Toby in Japanese

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

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 Toby becomes トビー 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.