Why is Qantas spelt カンタス?


At first I thought that Japanese people pronouncing Qantas as カンタス was an
urban legend (the start of "カンタス" matches a vulgar four letter word in
English), but I've since found out that it's real, with Qantas' Japanese
homepage having "カンタス航空｜ホームページ｜航空券｜旅行情報 - Qantas".

By contrast, there's almost always a "w" style sound when Australians
pronounce it. Wiktionary gives an IPA of /ˈkwɒntəs/, and the second sentence
of the [Japanese edition of Wikipedia's article on the
airline](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%AB%E3%83%B3%E3%82%BF%E3%82%B9%E8%88%AA%E7%A9%BA)
mentions how Australians pronounce it with three citations.

Why is Qantas spelt "カンタス" in Japanese?

As far as I can tell, it isn't because it resembles how non-Australian English
speakers pronounce the word - in the American movie "Rain Man" they pronounce
it with a "w" sound.

"カンタス" could be seen as matching a phonetic spelling of "Qantas", like how
English-speakers pronounce "Qatar", but I thought katakana was typically based
on how words are actually pronounced.

Alternatively, is it possible that katakana lacks the capability of indicating
the "w" sound in this scenario?




It's not impossible to render is as クワンタス but it's not really commercially
advantageous to adopt such a peculiar pronunciation. After all, I don't know
how they decided their own name since it's a proper noun like mackygoo says.




It's not impossible to render is as クワンタス but it's not really commercially
advantageous to adopt such a peculiar pronunciation. After all, I don't know
how they decided their own name since it's a proper noun like mackygoo says.

