> Do you find that the katakana approximates the native pronunciation of your name well? Nope. That is a linguistic impossibility; mostly due to the lack of th

> Do you find that the katakana approximates the native pronunciation of your name well? Nope. That is a linguistic impossibility; mostly due to the lack of the schwa vowel (ə) in Japanese (Korean does have that, so my name is easier in hangul as far as vowels are concerned). The katakana do approach it tolerably, and it is in essence my name when speaking Japanese. With katakana and hangul it is always a matter of compromising in one direction or another. If you have a very common name there will be common transcriptions that most people will stick to, but you can't prepare a list of all foreign names in the world, so inevitably two people will prefer different compromises, especially if they are fluent in that language. Personally, I would be very much miffed if someone forces a specific katakana reading of my given and family name on me. That actually happened once when I was in Japan as an exchange student at Rikkyō University. I don't normally use my second given name, so on one of the numerous forms that inevitably end up in front of you in Japan someone added their own interpretation of how that would sound in katakana. Some college administrative worker took the katakana provided in earlier communication for my first given name and family name and made up their own attempt based on how my second given name might be read in English (I'm Dutch). I was not amused.