katakana1

Katakana is Japanese one of basic charactor. They are constructed by 46 characters and express pronunciation. The function of katakana is almost same as hiragana. So, what's the difference? The difference is it's use. Hiragana is used to express Japanese word, and katakana is mainly used to express exotic words. So non-Japanese names are expressed by katakana when they are written in Japanese. They are also used to express the reading of Kanji words, since kanji words sometimes have multiple reading or irregular reading and not all Japanese can read them correctly. Below is complete list of katakana.

This list does not seems enough to express pronunciation of English or other language. This is because Japanese has less sound than other language. For example, Japanese does not have pronunciation of "L", so alot of Japanese can't tell "Right" and "Light". Because they are same when written in Katakana.
This may be one of the reason that a lot of Japanese can't speak good English, and non-Japanese people has difficulty in learning Japanese.

But if you want to convert your name to Japanese Kanji, don't need to study Japanese. Just use NinjaNameDatabase!