Introducing yourself in Japanese when you have a Roman name?


While reading online, I found numerous websites that had "Romaji translations"
of names that use the Roman alphabet. For example, the Japanese version of
Jordan is said to be either Jo-dan or Yorudan. So how do introduce myself?
"Watashi no namae wa Jordan desu" or "watashi no namae wa Jo-dan/Yorudan
desu?"




If you're going to use Roman alphabet, you can either leave it as original
spelling, or convert it to rōmaji (= in Japanese pronunciation).

If you go with original spelling, you'll be fine at that point, but may face a
"So, how do you pronounce it after all?" afterwards.

If you choose rōmaji, you should transcribe it according to **the sound in
your language, instead of spelling**. Fortunately, [transcription from
English](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcription_into_Japanese) has been
very predictable: _Jordan_ always becomes _jōdan_ (ジョーダン). What you found
_yorudan_ (ヨルダン) is for the name of [Kingdom of
Jordan](https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%A8%E3%83%AB%E3%83%80%E3%83%B3),
or of those from Germany and other Central European countries, where they
pronounce the letters that way.




If you're going to use Roman alphabet, you can either leave it as original
spelling, or convert it to rōmaji (= in Japanese pronunciation).

If you go with original spelling, you'll be fine at that point, but may face a
"So, how do you pronounce it after all?" afterwards.

If you choose rōmaji, you should transcribe it according to **the sound in
your language, instead of spelling**. Fortunately, [transcription from
English](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcription_into_Japanese) has been
very predictable: _Jordan_ always becomes _jōdan_ (ジョーダン). What you found
_yorudan_ (ヨルダン) is for the name of [Kingdom of
Jordan](https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%A8%E3%83%AB%E3%83%80%E3%83%B3),
or of those from Germany and other Central European countries, where they
pronounce the letters that way.

