18959
I'm trying to write the name of a Chinese friend, Ying. I know that the sounds
"yi" and "ye" don't exist any more except for the deprecated hiragana
characters, and katakana doesn't have either of them. The question, how should
I write it?

A Japanese friend suggested イン, but this misses out two kinda important
consonants from the word. Is there no better way of representing this name in
katakana?
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2014-10-06T21:11:56.940
18957
2019-10-08T23:34:33.350
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translation katakana names
How to write "yi" in katakana
I agree that `イン` is probably the best fit for the limitations of Japanese. Of
course, being Chinese, your friend already has a kanji for his/her name, so
you could always just use that and write `イン` as furigana for it.

Alternatively -- and I don't know how much this would happen in real life --
you could just use a Japanese pronunciation for the name's kanji. If you've
ever seen the movie [Ip Man](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1220719/), the main
character is the titular Chinese man. His name "Ip Man" (sometimes written
"Yip Man") has the Chinese characters `葉問`. In the movie, he is taken prisoner
by Japanese military, and the Chinese/Japanese intermediary calls him `ヨウ・モン`,
which you can see is the Japanese 音読み of those characters. So you could
possibly do that, although I don't know if that's somehow disrespectful to
change the pronunciation of the name.
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2014-10-06T21:29:58.497
18958
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イン is pretty much the standard way to transliterate Chinese "ying" to kana.
Here are some examples:

  * [陶晶瑩](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%99%B6%E6%99%B6%E7%91%A9) - Taiwanese celebrity 
    * Pinyin: Táo Jīngyíng
    * Kana: タオ・チンイン
  * [劉若英](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8A%89%E8%8B%A5%E8%8B%B1) - Taiwanese celebrity 
    * Pinyin: Liú RuòYīng
    * Kana: リウ・ルオイン
  * [馬英九](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%A6%AC%E8%8B%B1%E4%B9%9D) - President of Taiwan 
    * Pinyin: Mǎ Yīngjiǔ 
    * Kana: either ばえいきゅう (on'yomi of each kanji) or マー・インチウ (direct transcription of what it sounds in Chinese)

> but this misses out two kinda important consonants from the word

A little on this. When a word ends in ん, that ん can take on the sound of [ŋ].
For example, if you listen to [yuu0equal0u's recording of
わんわん](http://ja.forvo.com/word/%E3%82%8F%E3%82%93%E3%82%8F%E3%82%93/#ja) or
[panna's recording of
たくさん](http://ja.forvo.com/word/%E3%81%9F%E3%81%8F%E3%81%95%E3%82%93/#ja) on
Forvo.

Often, the transliteration doesn't reproduce exactly the original
pronunciation of the word. For example,
[スティーブ・ジョブズ](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%B9%E3%83%86%E3%82%A3%E3%83%BC%E3%83%96%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A7%E3%83%96%E3%82%BA)
sounds a bit different from how "Steve Jobs" is pronounced in English.

* * *

As to "yi", い・イ is definitely one way (although not the only way) of
transliterating this sound. We can see this in the kun'yomi of some kanjis:

  * 意 e.g. 意思
  * 医 e.g. 医者
  * 以 e.g. 以上
  * 衣 e.g. 衣服
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2014-10-06T21:43:05.550
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If you look at the Hiragana chart below, you notice that there are no
corresponding letters for "yi" and "ye". Those letters do not exist in
Japanese (not that we can't pronounce it).

![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/eZxQC.png) (From
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana>)

When we need to write foreign words containing "yi" and "ye", we use イ, and イエ
(or sometimes イェ) respectively.

A good example is probably "yes". We write it イエス。Another one is "yay". This
becomes イエイ。
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2014-10-07T08:14:32.747
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Yi (and other characters) existed in Japanese a long time ago and I found an
old katakana sheet that has the missing characters. This image is from 1873:
![Old katakana worksheet](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uHmqI.jpg)

More on this at this Japanese wikipedia page for:
[ヤ行イ](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%A4%E8%A1%8C%E3%82%A4). Also, note
that this page has the respective hiragana characters too.

In reality, most native Japanese will not be able to read the "classical yi"
or other classical characters.

There are contexts where the classical characters are still used, most notably
**Yebisu Beer** ; look at the katakana character after 琥珀:

![Kohaku Yebisu from www.moippai.com](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zQchy.jpg)  
<http://www.moippai.com/beer-reviews/kohaku-yebisu-(amber-yebisu)-259.html>

It looks like the katakana for "we"... which actually has me confused at the
moment because I always thought it was "ye"...

Anyways! Although the beer is "Yebisu" in romaji and "Yebisu" (or "Webisu"?)
in katakana, it is pronounced エビス.

**To answer your question though** you should probably go with イン as the
others have suggested but if you really want to use the character for yi, it
does it exist; just understand that most people will not be able to read it
and, even if they can read it, they will still pronounce it イ.
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is the hiragana foe ye but is HUGELY obsolete and its katakana was the same
for the katakana for the letter e (back then the e katakana was different
think of the katakana ne ネ and it was similar to this expect it didn't have
the 3rd and 4th stroke (the bottom and bottom right strokes))
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