Name in Japanese W Willard

Willard in Japanese

ウィラード
Katakana
ウィラード
Hiragana
うぃらーど
Romaji (Hepburn)
Wirādo

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

How Willard sounds in Japanese

Read it one katakana at a time:

ウィ Wi
ラー
Do

Full reading: Wirādo

Do more with Willard in Japanese

Why Willard 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, Willard appears as ウィラード. This is the correct and respectful way a non-Japanese name is represented; it is not a kanji "translation". A Japanese reader sees ウィラード and immediately reads it by its sound, Wirādo.

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 Willard becomes ウィラード 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.