Pronunciation of silent consonants in English names


My surname ends in a silent H, which makes the last two letters, TH,
pronounced like a hard T. I've read that Japanese tends to "make close
approximations (of names) based on spelling, not pronunciation". So, depending
on which is true, my name ends in either "to" or "tsu". Which one is more
accurate?




No, its actually the opposite. You use katakana (normally) and get as close as
you can phonetically to the original pronunciation. ツ would end your name like
"gets" so you'd have an S sound at the end which is probably not what you'd
want. I think hard T would probably use one of タ、ト、テ, which is ta, to, and te,
respectively. No matter what, I think you'll have to end with an added vowel,
which is not uncommon when trying to pronounce foreign words.

You can try an online site like here <http://www.japanese-name-
translation.com/> to help you get an idea. If its a common last name it may be
that someone has already figured it out and there's a "normal" way to write
it. If not, you can tweak it to get as close to the original pronunciation as
possible.

